Last week a livestock farmer called to report a cheetah caught in a trap. He won’t release the animal on site — it will kill his livestock. But knowing about the species’ imperiled status he does not want to shoot the animal either.
This happens to me often in Namibia and across other areas in southern Africa too. But options are there? One could put the animal into a captive facility and use it for tourism. This is hardly a desirable outcome, especially when considering that hundreds of cheetahs are trapped every year.
Secondly, one may try to relocate the cheetah to a suitable conservation area to maintain the animal as part of a free-ranging breeding population. Sounds good? Well, the latter approach has often been carried out, but just as often has been heavily criticized. We just don’t know how much such relocations cost.
To address this situation, my colleagues and I at the N/a’an ku sê Carnivore Conservation Research Project in Namibia, have now published the first detailed and case-specific relocation cost account for cheetah, leopard and brown hyena. It will help managers make better-informed conservation decisions in the future.
Our study shows, for example, that a single successful cheetah relocation will cost us nearly 7,000 USD, a hefty price indeed and substantially more than a successful leopard at about 3,000 USD. Most of the money went into monitoring the outcomes of relocations and although this may sound very expensive, it is not when compared to other methods used to protect cheetahs in the wild. We also argue that money spent on relocations should be used for threatened species and individuals and those with the highest chance of success. As a society we have to come to terms with the fact that there are no cheap ways out in conservation.
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