Years ago, Nick Kleer, together with his now-wife, then-girlfriend Kristina Perlerius-Kleer, visited the Tiger Canyon nature reserve in South Africa. They never left. Wild Connection documents their cheetah conservation efforts, as Kleer and Perlerius connect with the famously fast cats living in the reserve.
“They’re incredible creatures to be around,” Kleer says. Photo: Screenshot
Cheetahs are critically endangered. In the last century, their population has gone from 100,000 to less than 8,000. Their once-extensive habitat has shrunk due to increased urbanization and farming, leaving them with insufficient hunting ranges.
Anyone familiar with thoroughbred horses or purebred racing greyhounds will know that beautiful, fast animals are often also nervous, fragile, and inbred. The cheetah is no exception. The cheetah population is unusually inbred due to a population bottleneck that occurred around 12,000 years ago. While the paleolithic cheetahs managed to come back from the edge of extinction, it left them with very low genetic diversity.
Hands-on help required
As a result, cheetah breeding programs require very careful management. To save them, it isn’t enough to just fence off a piece of land and put a bunch of cheetahs in it, Kleer explains. It requires hands-on intervention by people who can closely monitor their physical and, yes, emotional well-being.
Low genetic diversity leads to infertility and increased health issues. Photo: Screenshot
While some conservation efforts emphasize a separation from nature for its own protection, Kleer thinks differently. With industrialization, he says, we have “disregarded…the natural world, to the point that people have forgotten that we are connected.”
His cheetah conservation means fostering a close, personal connection with the animals. His particular love for the species began when he first visited Tiger Canyon and met a pair of cheetah brothers. He’d only hoped to get a good view of them, but the pair approached him, purring, and invited him to pet them with friendly headbutts.
Since then, Kleer has spent much of his time in the bush with cheetahs, forming close friendships with several of them.
Brothers Runde and Sabi were living in Tiger Canyon when Kleer first visited a decade ago. They grew up in captivity and so were unable to live alone. Photo: Screenshot
Tiger Canyon’s cheetah reserve covers 970 hectares of bushland. Its inhabitants are Mara, her four cubs, her sister, and an adult male cheetah. Kleer recounts Mara’s story, explaining how her anxious, shy personality transformed after she had her first cub.
“She’s a very gentle soul…she truly enjoys our company,” Perlerius says.
Mara will even bring out her cubs to spend time with the human visitors. The cubs’ father is Mashai, who was raised in captivity and had to be taught how to hunt. Now, however, he is successfully living on his own in Tiger Canyon.
Nick Kleer and Kristina Perlerius-Kleer with Mara. Photo: Screenshot
Saving the cheetah will help restore the entire ecosystem, Kleer explains, from the antelope on down to the plants. In the same way, the cheetah is connected to the ecosystem, people are connected to cheetahs.
Since the Tiger Canyon cheetah conservation program has started, they’ve released ten individuals into the wild, several of which have gone on to have cubs.
