Why should Canadians care about wildlife in Southern Africa?

There is no time to lose.

The cheetah may be the fastest animal on the planet, and yet it is now in a race against time. Vulnerable to human-wildlife conflicts, loss of prey, illegal hunting, animal trafficking, and loss of habitat due to human activity, this animal needs your help now. And by now we mean “right now” – less than 8,000 of these gorgeous creatures still survive in the wild, which is a critical point for the danger of complete extinction.

The entire ecosystem is at stake.

One might ask – so what? Well, the cheetah is a predator that is crucial to controlling the populations of herbivores in the region and keeping those zebras and antelopes fit by running after them at a leisurely speed of 112 kph. Take the cheetahs out of the picture – and you are faced with overpopulation of other animals, loss of vegetation, and water shortages for all. We lose the cheetah – and a few years down the road, we will be talking about the urgent need to save a dozen other animals, as well as plants and humans themselves.

We have just one planet.

Yes, Southern Africa is half a world away, and yet it is on the same planet, this fragile deeply interconnected place we all call our home. Think about the cheetah in the global and long-term way – wouldn’t it be nice for our children’s children to be able to see a live and free cheetah instead of reading a sad story about how we had failed to save the oldest of all the big cats.

The final argument

If you are still reading this, you must be looking for one more argument to convince you to lend a hand to the preservation of cheetahs, and we have just the thing:

Just look how cute!!!