Aleya Ramparsad Banwari

Review of Cheetah Outreach Spier

Cheetah Outreach is a fantastic iniatitive and thr...

Cheetah Outreach is a fantastic iniatitive and through a space like this, you really begin to understand the impacts of human expansion on the environment. The guides are informative, friendly and passionate about what they are doing. I personally did not parttake in a close encounter with the cheetahs to touch them and take photos with them, but I can see how activities like this help raise awareness about the plight of cheetahs and help the organisation raise fund for their wild cheetah conservation project.

I must explain that all cheetahs that are involved in the encounter programme and that are at the Outreach centre are hand-raised, and are not forced into doing these envounters. If a cheetah is showing signs of distress, then they are not included in the encounters. Secondly, the money from this organisation goes towards breeding Anatolian shepard dogs which are given to farmers to protect their livestock from cheetahs (and involuntarily other predators like bat-eared foxes, servals, and jackels) who are also impacted by farmers trying to protect their livestock through traps, poison or shooting them. The cheetahs and smaller predators are often afraid of the dogs so they will just run away.

I really appreciate how the Centre explained their reasoning for keeping cheetah ambassadors and why they are promoting the shepard dog programme. They are doing some phenomenal work and such organisations deserve to be supported.