Some years ago, I took my family to a small shelter for wild animals that had been abused, abandoned or both. There were many different species behind wire fences where paying visitors could look at them and feel some sort of communion with otherwise wild animals – and then go and have lunch.
We appreciated how close you could be next to these animals and still feel safe. There weren’t any predator cages open to the public except for the cheetahs. The experience was interesting and the kids were having fun, but it still was a little discomforting. It felt that we were enjoying a not well-resourced zoo a little too much. The animals really didn’t have much space, and they didn’t look so pleased to be there.
As they were rescue animals that had spent extended periods in the care of humans, they couldn’t be re-wilded. They had to remain in captivity for the rest of their lives because they would not be able to survive in their natural habitat.
Keeping wild animals healthy and well fed requires substantial funding so the shelter charged tourists to visit and then invited us to their restaurant where you could have a full meal or light snacks. It’s an awkward arrangement but it gives struggling animals a second go at life and provides nice entertainment for the family on weekends.
The part that made the biggest impression on me was when they allowed adults to enter the cheetah enclosure. They were adamant, no children below a certain size were permitted to enter.
As I bravely stepped into the enclosure two paces behind my friend Dave, I quickly understood why they excluded children. The cheetahs were lazing on the grass, only half interested in Dave. They ignored me altogether, but both of them fixed their gaze on my daughter standing just outside the cage. It chilled my blood. They couldn’t care less about Dave and I standing unprotected right next to them, but a little girl standing behind a fence grabbed their attention.
These cheetahs were patently domesticated animals. They were perfectly relaxed in the presence of humans and even allowed us to pat their heads. It was exhilarating, but also a little scary. Their fur felt bristly and their tongues were much rougher than I had imagined. Yet as habituated to humans as they were, their hunting instincts were clearly not far below the surface.
Cheetahs are astonishingly beautiful animals. I have been awestruck by countless wildlife videos of these lithe machines sprinting after luckless gazelle, but nothing can prepare you for their awesome beauty up close.
I have been fortunate enough to see wild cheetahs in the Kruger National Park and in a private game reserve in the Eastern Cape. Each time the experience was memorable.
Cheetahs in the Addo Elephant Park
There are no cheetahs in the Addo Elephant Park (AEP) because SANParks determined that only animals that occur naturally in the area should be kept in each of its 20 reserves. For this reason you will not see any springbuck in the Kruger National Park, nor will you spot any giraffes or cheetahs in the AEP.
This is a rational policy in line with the aim of preserving the most natural environment possible in all of SANParks reserves. The policy is not however, without anomalies or controversies. For example, there are hundreds, if not thousands of warthogs in the AEP, yet some experts claim that the sub-species originally found in the area became extinct many years ago. The warthogs you invariably see in the park today were originally from the Western Cape.
Many private reserves in South Africa are not so rigid about keeping only endemic animals within their boundary fences, so it is not unusual for these establishments to keep cheetahs and other non-endemic animals.
This digression brings us back to the cheetahs that are definitely not supposed to be in the AEP. The bush in the natural environment is too thick to accommodate cheetahs that need wide open space to chase down their prey. Besides, they are not on the list of mammals found in the park.
For this reason, it was more than a little surprising when AEP visitors reported sightings of the tall spotted cat in the park in 2014. Could they be confused when they perhaps saw a leopard? After all, there are leopards on the list.
More people reported seeing three cheetahs and some even posted photos of their sightings on social media. Sometimes the pictures were a little blurry but they were undeniably cheetahs.
It appears that a coalition of three males escaped from the Hopewell Private Game Reserve and then found a break in the fence where they could enter the main section of the AEP.
I was privileged on one visit to see two cheetahs sprinting after a herd of red hartebeest in a fairly open part of the park. I wasn’t completely surprised because I had read about other people’s sightings but it’s quite different when you actually see the animals for yourself – live and running at high speed. According to reports, three cheetahs were living and hunting together, but I only saw two of them.
As it happened, on that occasion the spotted cats did not come close to catching the hartebeest – speedy antelopes themselves and quite strong too. My impression was that the cheetahs were young and were merely testing their hunting ability and making the lives of the hartebeest a misery for the fun of it.
Just as the cheetahs never came close to catching a hartebeest, I never came close to taking an even half-way decent photograph of them – running and dodging between the bushes. As a visitor who loves nothing more than seeing wildlife in action, it was a thrilling experience. As a photographer trying to take a picture of an exciting chase, it was a disappointment. I don’t even have a single blurred photo of that hunt.
After a few years enjoying the hospitality of Addo, SANParks conservation officials decided that the cheetahs had to go. They captured two of the animals and transferred them to Phinda Game Reserve in KwaZulu Natal province. Park management was not clear about what happened to the third member of the coalition.
When announcing the translocation, SANParks justified the move saying that they “were not destined to remain in Addo as they never occurred in the area naturally. It is South African National Park’s policy to only introduce wildlife species to parks where they would have occurred before hunting or habitat loss forced them to local extinction”.
SANParks went on to explain that the two cheetahs would be part of the Endangered Wildlife Trust’s Cheetah Meta-population Project (CMP) “which entails the management of over 300 cheetahs on more than 50 small fenced reserves in South Africa”.
It explained that individual animals need to be exchanged between isolated population groups to avoid inbreeding. The CMP is a collaborative effort between all cheetah reserves in the country and it is coordinated by the EWT. SANParks said “the principal goals of the CMP are to maintain the genetic and demographic integrity of the meta-population and to increase the resident range of cheetah in South Africa”.
Not everyone bought the explanation that cheetahs did not occur naturally in the Addo region. Marcel van der Merwe II argued on the Rewilding Forum that cheetahs tend to hunt wherever their prey roam. Early records show that “springbuck abounded” in the region and it is therefore reasonable to expect that cheetahs were indigenous in the area now known as the AEP.