It’s #InternationalCheetahDay 🐾 Did you know that the world’s cheetah population has declined by 90% in the last 100 years?

The Zoo has a long-standing relationship with the Cheetah Conservation Fund Canada. Through Keeper Awareness Days, the Endangered Species Reserve Fund, and our recent commitment to the Cheetah SAFE program, we support CCF’s innovative Livestock Guarding Dog program which reduces conflict between humans and cheetahs in shared habitat.

Beyond this program, CCF works across the cheetah’s range to mitigate threats, build capacity, and find solutions to ensure cheetahs have a bright future. A significant threat to cheetahs living in the Horn of Africa is the illegal wildlife trade. Poachers collect cheetah cubs from the wild to meet the demand for illegal pets abroad. Thankfully, law enforcement is getting better at confiscating these cubs before they are smuggled out of Africa. However, with no survival skills and no indication of where they came from, these cubs are stuck in limbo. CCF has a new Cheetah Rescue and Conservation Centre in Geed-Deeble, Somaliland. There are currently 98 cheetahs there.
The cheetahs that call your Toronto Zoo home have directly contributed to finding a solution. Through positive reinforcement training, keepers were able to voluntarily shave small hair samples from our cats. These samples helped researchers validate isotope analysis, which can help identify where confiscated cubs have come from – a key step in developing an effective conservation strategy.

Learn more at https://cheetah.org/canada/.