Our Wild World

Dr. Laurie Marker, Founder and Executive Director of Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF), is a pioneer of cheetah conservation. I have known of CCF’s work since its’ inception in 1990 in Namibia, yet we never crossed paths until this year when we finally met and she stayed at my home. Dr. Marker has worked with cheetahs since 1974, beginning with captive cheetahs in the US and was the first to successfully rewild the cheetah, developing cutting edge research on re-introducing cheetahs to the wild. With CCF, she has developed a holistic approach to the cheetahs conservation and survival that involves programs ranging from education of farmers to care for their livestock and implement predator-friendly livestock management, to habitat restoration by processing encroaching bush into Bushblok, a low-emission, compact log for cooking, to development of the best practices for storing cheetah sperm and blood samples in the Genome Research Bank to provide “insurance” for the cheetah’s survival.