{"id":46338,"date":"2017-01-01T19:23:23","date_gmt":"2017-01-02T00:23:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetsave.com\/?p=46338"},"modified":"2017-01-01T19:24:47","modified_gmt":"2017-01-02T00:24:47","slug":"7100-cheetahs-left-world-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/articles\/7100-cheetahs-left-world-study-finds\/","title":{"rendered":"Only 7,100 Cheetahs Left In The World, Study Finds"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are now only 7,100 cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus<\/em>) left in the world, according to a new study from the Zoological Society of London, Panthera, and the Wildlife Conservation Society.<\/p>\n

The causes? The same ones as always — habitat loss and fragmentation, the “pet” trade, desertification (often driven by deforestation<\/a>), and the over hunting of prey species.<\/p>\n

The new study also found that the cheetah has now been driven out of 91% of its historic range, and that there are now fewer than 50 of the Asiatic cheetah left in the world, all clustered in one isolated portion of Iran.<\/p>\n

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As a result of the findings, the researchers behind it are calling for the cheetah’s status on the IUCN<\/a> Red List of Threatened Species to be upgraded to “Endangered” from “Vulnerable.” They are also calling for extensive international efforts to be made to prevent the extinction of the animal. Without “an urgent paradigm shift in cheetah conservation” — landscape-level efforts that go beyond national borders — the species will likely go extinct within the lifetime of many of those reading this.<\/p>\n

What this would mean in practice of course is just that the extant cheetah would join its convergent-evolution “relative,” the American Cheetah, in extinction. (For more on this, see: 10 Extinct Animals Of The Last 100 Years, And Before<\/a>.) Yet another loss for the world though, not something to be celebrated.<\/p>\n

The extinction would, after all, mean the absolute end of the world’s fastest living land animal.<\/p>\n

The press release<\/a> provides more: “To make matters worse, as one of the world\u2019s most wide-ranging carnivores, 77% of the cheetah\u2019s habitat falls outside of protected areas. Unrestricted by boundaries, the species\u2019 wide-ranging movements weaken law enforcement protection and greatly amplify its vulnerability to human pressures. Indeed, largely due to pressures on wildlife and their habitat outside of protected areas, Zimbabwe\u2019s cheetah population has plummeted from 1,200 to a maximum of 170 animals in just 16 years — representing an astonishing loss of 85% of the country\u2019s cheetahs.”<\/p>\n

That speed of extirpation is more or less what we can expect to see in most regions without significant changes to conservation strategies.<\/p>\n

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