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Cheetahs are beautiful and speedy.
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There once were more than
100,000 cheetahs living in Africa and Asia.
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Today only about 10,000 of the animals remain.
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Laurie Marker is working to keep cheetahs from disappearing.
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“I started working with cheetahs when I lived in Oregon —
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and I ran a wildlife park there;
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this was back in the early ’70s,
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and nobody knew anything about cheetahs
and I was fascinated about them,
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and the more people I asked they said
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‘when you find out something
about cheetahs let us know
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they don’t do well in captivity,
they have a very short life span,
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and we’re losing them throughout the ranges in the world.’
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So that just made me fascinated and
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I wanted to know everything there was about them.”
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Dr. Marker traveled to Namibia
to learn more about cheetahs.
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The country has the world’s largest wild cheetah population.
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“Understanding about how
the cheetah lives is really important.
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So understanding its biology and its behavior,
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understanding the ecology of it,
which really revolves around where it’s living and,
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and how it’s living, and that interfaces with humans.”
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In 1990, Dr. Marker created the Cheetah Conservation Fund,
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a non-profit group based in Namibia.
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Farmers often kill cheetahs
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because they can
attack cattle and other farm animals.
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So Dr. Marker started working with farmers
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to find ways to help
protect their animals from the big cats.
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In 1994,
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she began telling
farmers about the Anatolian Shepherd.
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“This breed has been used for about 5,000 years
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to protect livestock from predators.
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And they act as a guardian by avoidance —
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they bark loudly, they tell a predator that
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they’re there protecting the flock,
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and the flock will come around the dog
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and by the dog barking — the predator doesn’t
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want to get hurt — and they will then
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avoid those flocks where the dogs are.”
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Over 15 years, the Fund has donated more than
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400 dogs to livestock farmers in Namibia.
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“Since our time in Namibia the population
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of cheetahs there was about 1,000–1,500 individuals.
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Today it’s probably 3,500 maybe 4,000 cheetahs.
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So we’ve been able to really grow the population.
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And that’s out of a world population of about 10,000.”
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The farmers have reported up to an 80 percent decrease
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in farm animal deaths.
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Dr. Marker wants to expand the CCF programs
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to other countries, where cheetahs once lived.
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“If we are not successful we’re going to lose
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this amazing species in a very short period of time.”