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Cheetahs are
beautiful and speedy. They can run as fast as 110 kilometers an
hour.
There once were more than 100,000 cheetahs living in Africa and
Asia. Today only about 10,000 of the animals remain. Most are in 24 African
countries. Laurie Marker is working to keep cheetahs from
disappearing.
LAURIE MARKER: "I started working with cheetahs when I
lived in Oregon -- and I ran a wildlife park there; this was back in the early
'70s, and nobody knew anything about cheetahs and I was fascinated about them,
and the more people I asked they said 'when you find out something about
cheetahs let us know; they don't do well in captivity, they have a very short
life span, and we're losing them throughout the ranges in the world.' So that
just made me fascinated and I wanted to know everything there was about
them."
Dr. Marker traveled to Namibia to learn more about cheetahs. The
country has the world's largest wild cheetah population.
LAURIE MARKER:
"Understanding about how the cheetah lives is really important. So understanding
its biology and its behavior, understanding the ecology of it, which really
revolves around where it's living and, and how it's living, and that interfaces
with humans."
In 1990, Dr. Marker created the Cheetah Conservation Fund,
a nonprofit group based in Namibia.
Farmers often kill cheetahs because
they can attack cattle and other farm animals. So Dr. Marker started working
with farmers to find ways to help protect their animals from the big cats. In
1994, she began telling farmers about the Anatolian Shepherd.
LAURIE
MARKER: "This breed has been used for about 5,000 years to protect livestock
from predators. And they act as a guardian by avoidance - they bark loudly, they
tell the predator that they're there protecting the flock, and the flock will
come around the dog and by the dog barking -- the predator doesn't want to get
hurt - and they will then avoid those flocks where the dogs are."
Over
fifteen years, the Fund has donated more than 400 dogs to livestock farmers in
Namibia. The farmers have reported up to an 80 percent decrease in farm animal
deaths.
LAURIE MARKER: "Since our time in Namibia the population of
cheetahs there was about 1,000 to 1,500 individuals. Today it's probably 3,500,
maybe 4,000 cheetahs. So we've been able to really grow the population. And
that's out of a world population of about 10,000."
Dr. Marker wants to
expand the CCF programs to other countries, where cheetahs once lived.
LAURIE MARKER: "If we are not successful we're going to lose this
amazing species in a very short period of time."
I'm Mario
Ritter.
원문출처 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rSEP4nL6L4&feature=youtube_gdata
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