According to a recent study by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), Panthera, and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), there are only 7,100 cheetahs remaining on the Earth.
The cheetah has been placed in the "vulnerable" category of the IUCN's Red List of Threatened Species. The main cause of the decreasing number of the world's fastest animal include loss of prey, illegal trafficking, and habitat loss.
The cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) has been driven out of 91 percent of its historic range, according to Phys. Having been hit the hardest, only 50 Asiatic cheetah are remaining in one isolated pocket of Iran.
The authors of the study have made a request for the cheetah to be uplisted from "Vulnerable" to "Endangered" on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species so that the species can become eligible for greater international conservation support, prioritization, and attention.
Describing the study as the most comprehensive analysis of cheetah's status till date, Dr. Sarah Durant, ZSL/WCS lead author and Project Leader for the Rangewide Conservation Program for Cheetah and African Wild Dog, said that it has always been difficult to gather hard information on the species, leading to its plight being overlooked.
Durant and her team have worked with state governments and the cheetah conservation community to bring comprehensive frameworks to action to save the species. However, they have always lacked funds and resources to implement them. She noted that the recent decisions made at the CITES CoP17 meeting in Johannesburg are a significant breakthrough particularly against trafficking of the cats out of the Horn of Africa region.
Even under proper protection in parks and reserves, cheetahs are faced with the pervasive threats of human-wildlife conflict, prey loss due to overhunting by humans, habitat loss, illegal trafficking of their parts, and trade as exotic pets. Also, 77 percent of the cheetah's habitat falls outside of protected areas making it vulnerable to human pressures. Zimbabwe's cheetah population has plummeted from 1,200 to a maximum of 170 animals in just 16 years - a loss of 85 percent of the country's cheetah population.
"The take-away from this pinnacle study is that securing protected areas alone is not enough. We must think bigger, conserving across the mosaic of protected and unprotected landscapes that these far-ranging cats inhabit, if we are to avert the otherwise certain loss of the cheetah forever," Panthera's Cheetah Program Director Dr. Kim Young-Overton said.