The Asiatic cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus) is one of the fastest creatures on the planet, capable of exceeding 90 kilometres per hour and of mapping its surrounding space with remarkable ability. Yet their incredible speed will likely not be enough to outrun the extinction these animals seem destined for.

The decline of the Asiatic cheetah

Asiatic cheetahs, genetically distinct from their African cousins from whom they separated more than thirty thousand years ago, once populated a large part of the Asian continent, from Saudi Arabia to India, while today they survive only in Iran. The number of these animals has drastically declined (in the 1990s around 400 individuals were recorded) due to habitat loss and hunting that has decimated gazelles, the cheetah's primary prey. Conflict with herders has also intensified, as they have expanded their grazing lands into cheetah hunting grounds, also causing several fatal incidents involving the big cats and vehicles.

Only 100 individuals remain

An estimated one hundred Asiatic cheetahs are thought to survive in the wild, figures that make this big cat one of the most threatened mammals on the planet. The species is classified as Critically Endangered on the Red List of the Iucn. In recent years Iran has stepped up its efforts to protect cheetahs and to try to preserve the remaining population through conservation projects and awareness campaigns for the local population.

4 December is International Cheetah Day

African cheetahs too, albeit with considerably more reassuring numbers (estimated at around 10,000), have been in unrelenting decline since the early years of the last century. Since then, wild populations have disappeared from twenty countries. Precisely to highlight the risk facing these big cats, 4 December marks International Cheetah Day, established by the conservation organisation Cheetah Conservation Fund.

Reintroduction to defeat extinction

To offer cheetahs a further chance of survival, several individuals live in zoological parks around the world, so as to preserve the highest possible genetic variability and to allow for their subsequent reintroduction into the wild. "The reduction of wild populations has produced the phenomenon of inbreeding between closely related individuals, unfortunately placing this species on the threshold of extinction," said Cesare Avesani Zaborra, scientific director of Parco Natura Viva in Bussolengo, where Teo, Duma and Mookane — three young male African cheetahs — live.