An extremely worrying trend is emerging in South Africa, where cheetahs are bred on demand, taken away from their mothers to be hand-reared for cub petting, to become well-behaved ambassador species, or to be exported for either “zoological” reasons or into the pet trade.
With the number of cheetahs in captivity soaring to more than 600 kept in about 80 different facilities, concerns have been raised that this industry is showing alarming similarities of the lion breeding industry, with its links to canned hunting and legal lion bone trade.
Since 1975, half of the world’s wild cheetah population has been lost and the species is now confined to just 9% of its historical distributional range. The IUCN status for cheetah is Vulnerable, although the scientific community is calling for a reclassification to Endangered.
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