Cheetahs in Our Community - Return of the Cheetah.

If cheetahs are ever going to have a fighting chance at returning to the wild in the Horn of Africa, they will need the local community on their side. A key part of the Cheetah Conservation Fund's mission is working with community leaders to create a conservancy area where cheetahs will one day bring back a healthy ecosystem and even wildlife tourism. Come on in. We've got our community here and we're going to talk about the area around, which is the conservancy area. Hello. This is Hazen. He's one of my friends. So we've got maps, each one of them have mapped out their villages, where they have their houses, their villages, where the wildlife is. One aspect of the conservancy work is finding out what wildlife exists in which areas. From surveying the land and speaking with the locals. This shows the mountains that are there. Despite the loss of these majestic animals, the community is now taking a stand for conservation. What I've learned over my days with Dr. Marker and her team is that to rescue and rehabilitate cubs like these and stop the illegal wildlife trade, you have to fight the battle on multiple fronts. People here have said, why are you here, cheetahs? We've got people issues. And I said, we've got people issues. Save the cheetah and the people will all do well. It's a system. You've got to get the bottom right. And the bottom is going to be the soils, the grasses, the people who are on the ground. And then everything else builds up to this, again, the apex predator. Once you have it, you've got much greater biodiversity as well. And everybody's living better out of it too. What you've been able to do, just in the last few years, building this place, it's really neat to see changes happening so fast here. You know that the big picture is going to be a multi-year plan. And it's neat that you're sticking with it. You've been sticking with it your whole entire life. I don't think you're stopping now. You're not slowing down, that's for sure. Yeah, I thought I would, right? But really, we're struggling. The cheetah is really struggling. And so the work that needs to be done has to accelerate. We have no choice. If we don't, we're not going to have cheetahs. And I can't live in a world with that. I'd really like to have you take a look at the area that we're hoping to develop next. Large areas where the cats, selected ones, could go back out into. We're calling it our rewilding area. Where we are hoping that we can go to the next phase and that some of these animals can eventually live free and in the wild. Oh, amazing. Yeah. Let's go. Okay. The road to rewilding cheetahs might be a long one, but it's a worthy goal. With the hard work of the Cheetah Conservation Fund and the local government and community, I believe that these cheetahs can be reintroduced to their natural habitat across the Horn of Africa.