Our Wild World

We had an incredible opportunity to catch up again with Dr. Laurie Marker of Cheetah Conservation Fund before she heads back to Namibia. With the illegal wildlife trade so much in the spotlight now, today we highlight the lesser-known incidents of illegal pet trade and trafficking in cheetah and its’ detrimental impact across the planet on the overall wild, and captive, gene pool. An estimated 300 cheetahs are poached and smuggled each year, and illegally sold in the Arabian Peninsula pet trade, and of that only one out of six cubs survive. While we often think of rhinos and elephants as the species critically endangered by the illegal trade, the cheetah is literally fighting for its survival with fewer than 7,500 remaining across populations that are highly fragmented and 80% of those located outside protected areas, putting the cheetah at great risk for extinction. For a species with low populations numbers to begin with, losses to trafficking threaten the cheetah’s very existence.