Dr. Arthur Bagot-Smith (right) and Dr. Adrienne Crosier (middle right) carefully monitor CCF's cheetah Luna's anaesthesia for laproscopic surgery, with help of CCF's cheetah keeper, Marianne de Jonge.

The Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) is dedicated to the conservation of wild cheetahs. Necessary activities include education, human-conflict resolution, and research. Interesting research underway at CCF now includes a visit by a team of four collaborative researchers from the Smithsonian Institute and the University of California, Davis, both in the United States. The research team, with assistance from Namibian veterinarians and specialists, is developing techniques that will improve captive reproduction. The captive cheetahs elsewhere in the world not only represent an important gene pool, but also form a safeguard in case of disaster amongst the wild populations.

The joint research project targets the reproductive biology of captive female cheetahs, which are notoriously difficult to breed. Although none of the cheetahs at CCF will carry a fertilized embryo through pregnancy, the techniques devised here will help institutions better manage and breed their cheetahs and perpetuate the captive gene pool.

The study encompasses cheetahs of a wide range of ages. CCF has arranged the felines into age brackets that include young, middle-aged, and older animals to determine the differences in ovarian function, oocyte (egg) quality and uterine health among age groups. The important information gathered will allow the team to ultrasound the reproductive organs of the females and induce estrus artificially by injecting various hormones into the cats. The team will then extract the females' egg, a task that requires precision timing-right before the female ovulates.

(From L to R) Mr. Tomas Baker, Dr. Pierre Comizzoni, Dr. Autumn Davidson, and Dr. Adrienne Crosier, analyse an ultrasound image of a cheetah's uterus and other vital organs before the team extracts follicles.

The team, under the direction of the Smithsonian's Dr. Adrienne Crosier, will also extract semen samples from one of CCF's male cheetahs. With their collections, they will perform in vitro fertilization (IVF)-the fusion of egg and sperm outside of the female reproductive tract. Joined by Dr. Arthur Bagot-Smith, CCF's veterinarian who specializes in cattle reproduction, the team will perform IVF for cheetahs in CCF's reproductive laboratory. If the process is successful, they will track the development of the embryos in an incubator. The embryos, however, will not be implanted back into the females.

Reproduction is a difficult feat for captive cheetahs. The species suffers from tremendous inbreeding because of a genetic bottleneck that occurred approximately ten thousand years ago, leaving the species genetically compromised. The global population was reduced to just a few breeding pairs, which means that every cheetah today descends from one of these few cats. Because of this evolutionary phenomenon, all cheetahs are genetically similar, and more vulnerable to ecological and evolutionary changes. This lack of genetic variation is one of the principal reasons for cheetahs' susceptibility to disease and their poor sperm quality.

Dr. Pierre Comizzoni (right) and Dr. Adrienne Crosier (left) examine the development of embryos that have been fertilized through in vitro techniques and incubated in CCF's reproductive laboratory.

"Older females do not reproduce well in captivity and we know that reproductive efficiency declines in these females at around 8 years of age. This project will determine if the drop in reproductive capacity is due to a problem with ovarian function, poor quality eggs or uterine pathologies that prevent pregnancy," said Crosier.

"In the world's zoos, there is an abundance of older female cheetahs that carry valuable genes that are underrepresented in the gene pool. This study will help develop methods of impregnating the females and thus conserving their invaluable genes and infusing the captive population with much-needed genetic variation," says Dr. Laurie Marker, CCF's Founder and Executive Director. Although saving habitat is the ultimate goal in saving the species, understanding all aspects of the cheetahs biology and physiology is one of the very important pieces in saving the cheetah for future generations.

Editor's notes:

• The Cheetah Conservation Fund is a Namibian non-profit trust dedicated to the long-term survival of the cheetah and its ecosystems.
• Since 1990, the organisation has developed education and conservation programmes based on its bio-medical cheetah research studies, published scientific research papers, presented educational programmes to over 120 000 outreach school learners, donated over 230 Anatolian livestock guarding dogs to commercial and communal farmers as a non-lethal livestock management programme, and has established a cheetah genome resource bank of cheetah sperm, tissue and blood samples.
• Research into cheetah biology and ecology has greatly increased our understanding of the fastest land animal, and education programmes for schools and the farming community help change public attitudes to allow predator and humans to coexist. However, despite the many successes of CCF programmes, the cheetah is still Africa's most endangered big cat.
• The captive cheetah population is approximately 10% of the world's remaining cheetah population with about 1400 cheetahs in about 165 zoological institutions in about 65 countries throughout the world. Annually there are about 150 cubs born with approximately a 26% infant mortality. A female cheetah can have from one to eight cubs born after a 93-95 day gestation with an average litter of 4-5.
• Dr. Laurie Marker is the International Cheetah Studbook Keeper and registers all cheetahs living in captivity in the world.

Cheetah Conservation Fund Namibia contact information:

PO Box 1755, Otjiwarongo
Tel (in Namibia): (067) 306225
Tel (international): (264-67) 306225
Fax: (067) 306247
E-mail: cheeta@iafrica.com.na