Running With the Cheetahs in Africa

OTJIWARANGA, NAMIBIA, Sept. 4, 2009— -- Here's one thing Dr. Laurie Marker has learned in her two decades of caring for cheetahs: You need to give the fastest land mammals on earth the chance to stretch their legs.

"They're so beautiful," says Dr. Marker, a co-founder and executive director of Cheetah Conservation Fund, a not-for-profit group dedicated to the conservation and management of the world's cheetahs and their ecosystems. "They're the most amazing animal on the face of the earth."

Over the past 19 years, Dr. Marker, a California native, has been here in Namibia working to save the cheetah. Namibia has the largest population of the animals, with an estimated 2,500.

Though cheetahs are fast – reaching speeds of up to 70 miles an hour – they are also fast-disappearing. One hundred years ago, there were 100,000 of them on the planet. Today, 90 percent are gone, according to experts.

The problems plaguing the animals vary – from shrinking habitats to loss of genetic variation. But another big threat in Namibia are farmers, who are systematically slaughtering the hungry animals as a method of defending their livestock.

"Their extinction is happening now," says Marker. "If we don't do more rapidly, the cheetah is not going to be around in 20 years."

Dr. Marker's foundation is trying to save the cheetah by giving orphan and injured cats a home and studying them in labs.

The group also trains and breeds rare dogs for farmers to use to help protect their flocks. These so-called livestock guarding dogs protect cattle, sheep and goats from predator attacks "because of their power," says Dr. Marker. "If they have to, they will fight to the death."

While the trained dogs have been successful in keeping the farmers from killing cheetahs, Dr. Marker knows they're not enough.

As she guards and nourishes some of the older animals she's adopted over the years, she worries about the fate of the entire species.

"Everything about them is amazing," she says. "They are truly beautiful." But "they are going away in front of our very eyes."