Saturday, November 19, 2011

Cheetah males rewilded, landscapes and VIP visitors.

We hope you enjoy these photos taken during the release of Ombdillo, Anakin, Obi-wan and Chester last Sunday. They are now in the 4,000-ha Bellebenno training camp and doing great and by Wednesday had already made their first kill!

The release team. (c) Cheetah Conservation Fund

The first kill. (c) Cheetah Conservation Fund

These have been exciting days here. On Tuesday, we were in Windhoek for the launch of the Namibia Protected Landscape Conservation Areas Initiative (NAM-Place), which establishes five protected landscape conservation areas to address threats to habitat and species loss on a landscape-level approach. One of these areas is the Greater Waterberg Complex, where we have done lots of livestock and wildlife management training for about four years, and includes the Eastern Communal area conservancies, the Waterberg Plateau Park and the Waterberg Conservancy.

NAM-Place, funded by the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) and in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), strengthens the Namibian government’ steady commitment to environmental protection and sustainable natural resource management, as stated by the Minister of Environment and Tourism, the Hon. Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwa, during her inaugural speech on Tuesday.

The Minister of the Environment and Tourism and our Greater Waterberg Complex group. (c) Cheetah Conservation Fund

We were also honoured to host the U.S. Ambassador to Namibia, Wanda Nesbitt here at CCF yesterday. It was great showing her around our Centre and sharing information about our work with her.