February 20, 2025 • 25 mins
Join us on this episode of Wild Tails as we welcome Mary Wykstra, founder and director of Action for Cheetahs in Kenya. Mary has dedicated her career to cheetah conservation in Africa, working closely with local communities, farmers, and researchers to ensure the survival of one of the world’s most endangered big cats.
In this episode, Mary shares an incredible firsthand story from the field, giving listeners a glimpse into the real challenges of wildlife conservation. From tracking cheetahs in the wild to navigating human-wildlife conflict, Mary’s work highlights the delicate balance between protecting predators and supporting local livelihoods.
If you're passionate about big cats, African wildlife, and conservation efforts, this episode is a must-listen! Tune in to hear how dedicated conservationists like Mary are making a difference for cheetahs in Kenya.
🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform!
Learn More about Action for Cheetahs at https://www.actionforcheetahs.org/
Follow Action for Cheetahs on Instagram @actionforcheetahs
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Email the show at wildtailspod@gmail.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:20):
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hello and welcome into the Wild Tales Podcast.
I am your host, Mike Bona, and thank you all for returning to listen to another
episode.
Unless it's your first time, then just keep listening.
Don't go anywhere.
I got a real great guest, a real good story coming up.
Just trust me.
It's good.
You'll like it.
I'm glad you found me.
I don't know how you did.
(00:40):
Hopefully someone recommended the podcast to you, as I suggest for all my
listeners to do.
Please, this podcast is growing.
I'm so excited to see that, but I'm greedy and I would like it to grow
faster.
But in the meantime, for today's episode, I'm thrilled to introduce Mary
Weikstra.
She's the founder and director of Action for Cheetahs in Kenya.
(01:01):
Mary has dedicated her life to cheetah conservation, working tirelessly.
I'm not going to edit.
I'm going to try it again.
Working tirelessly to protect one of the world's most endangered big cats.
Her work isn't just about studying cheetahs.
It's about understanding the delicate balance between wildlife and local
communities, working with farmers, and finding ways for humans and predators to
(01:25):
coexist.
In today's episode, she shares an incredible story from the field, one of her
earliest and most surprising observations about cheetahs.
So stay tuned and listen to that one.
Let's get ready for a deep dive into the world of cheetahs, the realities of
conservation, and the passion that drives it all.
Let's jump right in.
Ladies and gentlemen, here's Mary Weikstra.
(01:51):
All right.
Well, thank you, Mary, for joining Wild Tales all the way on the other side of
the world.
As we were just discussing on our own, you're in Kenya.
I'm in Los Angeles.
You're drinking your morning juice.
I have my little special evening drink.
We won't say what it is.
Mm.
Mm-hmm.
You could probably guess.
(02:12):
So you're the founder and president of Action for Cheetahs.
I want to get into your story, but real quick, you want to tell us a
little bit about what Action for Cheetahs is and what you guys do?
Yeah.
So Action for Cheetahs in Kenya is a nonprofit organization registered as a
501c3 in the States.
(02:33):
We began working in Kenya in 2001 when I was still under the Cheetah
Conservation Fund.
In 2009, we registered our own organization and formed Action for Cheetahs in
Kenya, which is actually under our own nonprofit organization called
(02:55):
Carnivore's Livelihoods and Landscapes.
And we set it up here in Kenya so that we could hire employees here and
follow all of the right protocols legally, but also because we needed to be
able to do our own fundraising efforts.
So what we do is obviously study cheetahs, as Action for Cheetahs would say,
(03:19):
but we look at human wildlife conflict mitigation.
We look at cheetah distribution and cheetah diet and basically monitoring the
population of cheetahs throughout Kenya.
But we have focused projects right now up in Samburu, which is in northern
Kenya, where that's where our employees are based and where our field camp is.
(03:42):
Fantastic.
Yeah.
Several years ago, my wife and I were in Kenya and we went to the Lewa
Wildlife Conservancy.
And that's like one of the top animals on our list was to see a cheetah.
And I know it can be kind of hit and miss in some of these places.
Sometimes you get lucky.
Sometimes you don't.
And I think on our first drive, like 20 minutes in, we came right across a
(04:03):
cheetah just lying in the grass, just posing for us, just waiting for us.
It was beautiful.
Yes.
But working out there, doing cheetah conservation, I'm sure you get to see a
lot more cheetahs than that one I did.
And I'm guessing you got a good cheetah story to tell me, or maybe a couple.
Yeah.
(04:23):
So just to kind of step back into the Lewa side of things too, that's actually
where I saw my first wild cheetah as well.
I was a zookeeper in the U.S. I worked at Binder Park Zoo in Michigan
and then moved to Utah's Hogle Zoo as an exhibit designer.
And that was when I got into the American Association of Zookeepers and I began
(04:46):
doing fundraising and working with the zookeeper chapter on our bowling for
rhinos.
So because I was trying so hard to win the trip to Africa, I actually decided
that I was going to take a second mortgage out on my house.
And I traveled to Lewa to meet Anna Mert.
And similar to you, on the first drive that we had actually from the airport
(05:09):
out towards Lewa is when I saw the first wild cheetah.
And I had worked with cheetahs at both zoos.
So that was number one on my bucket list as well.
Little did I know at that time that the next direction that I would be taking
would be to actually study cheetahs.
So about six years after that, a friend and I decided we wanted to do some
(05:31):
volunteer projects.
And so we sent out applications to several organizations and the Cheetah
Conservation Fund happened to be one of those organizations that accepted us as
volunteers.
And so that's kind of how I got my start was basically through zoos, through
volunteering and through reaching out to do a project in Kenya.
(05:52):
But when I came to Kenya, I had spent some time at the Cheetah Conservation
Fund prior to that.
And I felt like I was just going to be able to implement some of the
same programs using the model of the Cheetah Conservation Fund.
But when I got to Kenya, I found out that the cheetahs here are quite
(06:13):
different.
The people are definitely quite different from the people in Namibia.
The landscape is very different.
Instead of open plains and bushland, we have from forests to savannas that that
are quite bush encroached as well, some native and some invasive as well.
But it was it was a really different landscape.
(06:36):
So as a part of of starting to set up the project, of course, one of
the first things you want to do is monitor cheetahs and learn more about the
cheetah behavior.
So we did put some radio collars on some of the cheetahs in our first study
area.
And in tracking the cheetahs, what you do did back then when your technology
(06:57):
was a little bit not as advanced as this today, what we would do is we
would triangulate the sound, the ticking sound of the of the cheetah radio
collar.
And then we would go on foot to try to get visuals of those cheetahs.
And so as we're walking into some fairly thick bush area, the vervet monkeys
(07:18):
started to make a lot of their alarm calls and us thinking that we were still
a little ways away from the cheetah and the vervet monkeys were were screaming
because of us.
Suddenly, this happened to be a mother cheetah that had five cubs.
She was radio collared because she was a problem cheetah.
And we were just trying to make sure that her and her cubs were OK by
(07:39):
trying to get a visual.
And so the vervet monkeys were kind of down in the lower parts of the branches,
jumping and making their alarm calls.
And suddenly all six cheetahs came running out of the bush in our direction.
And the mother cheetah jumped up off the ground.
She jumped about four feet in the air, grabbed one of the vervet monkeys, put
(08:00):
it in her mouth.
You know how a cat that grabs a toy will stick it in the mouth and
then run.
She did this with the vervet monkey.
She ran off.
The other five cubs, which were subadults, were running in all directions.
And that was the first time that I had ever heard of a cheetah killing a
vervet monkey.
Of course, I was with some of my field officers and one of the field officers
(08:24):
grabbed me by the shoulders and actually held me in front of him.
And I felt like, you know, hey, let go of me type thing.
And he said, you know, when when you feel safe, you actually put what makes you
feel safe in front of you.
So so that was a little alarming.
And then the three of us, we looked at each other and said, did anybody get
(08:44):
a picture of that?
And of course, it was just such a shocker to have these six cheetahs running
around us that none of us did get a picture.
So we had no proof that the cheetah ate a vervet monkey other than three of
us saw it with our with our eyes.
I called a few people.
I said, you know, is that normal?
Do cheetahs eat monkeys?
No, no, cheetahs don't ever eat monkeys.
(09:06):
Fast forward to about six years later, we began doing cheetah fecal studies,
scat analysis, poop, whatever you want to call it.
And.
The master student, Noreen Mutoro, who was doing the analysis of the cheetah
scat that we had been collecting, gave me a call one afternoon and said, Mary,
(09:28):
I found something really unusual.
She said there's a hand of a vervet monkey in one of the scats of the
cheetah.
So now we had two incidences documenting that cheetahs will eat vervet monkeys.
So at least get a picture of the hand.
We do have a picture of a hand, actually.
(09:49):
Yes.
You know, I don't know if I want to see it, but how how adaptable the
cheetahs actually are.
And what we kind of needed to then find out next was that like a last
ditch adaptation to habitat loss?
Or is that because cheetahs are more adaptable than we originally thought they
(10:12):
were?
So we've continued since then to do scat analysis.
What we actually do now, because that first study, our field officers found
about 300 poops that they thought could potentially be cheetah.
But in Noreen's study, only 27 of those cheetahs, of those scats actually
(10:35):
belong to a cheetah.
So we knew we had to come up with a better way to identify and find
cheetahs.
And we now have a scat detection dog program that we use domestic dogs to
locate cheetah poop.
And then we don't have to have the radio collars on.
We don't have to go trucking in the bush the same way that we that we
(10:56):
did searching for a little bleeping noise.
But our dogs are able to find the scat.
And in the studies that we've done so far, our dogs have found over 300 cheetah
scats across different areas of Kenya.
And we now have another student who is doing genetic analysis and diet
analysis.
(11:17):
So we don't have the results on how many more monkeys, but yeah.
Yeah.
And the dogs, they can tell the difference between cheetah scat and lion scat
and leopard scat, like all the other poops you'll find in the wild, huh?
It's amazing how keen a sense of smell a dog can have.
(11:38):
A cheetah has 30 million sensors in their nose and they actually can smell in
3D.
So similar to how we see in 3D, the dog finds its direction using its nose
way better than we do.
But I will say cheetah scat has a very pungent odor.
And there are times that as we get close to where the dog is indicating like,
(11:59):
whoop, now I know why he found it.
But yeah, when it's fresh scat, cheetah scat has a very strong pungent smell.
So yeah, the dogs, one of our dogs actually found a scat from about 700 meters,
almost a kilometer away.
That's a half a mile away from the track that we were searching on.
(12:20):
He basically just took off in the direction and the handler recognized that the
dog had a ascent and we went in the direction of where the scat was.
And it was when we documented from where he first saw the dog have an
indication to where the scat was, was 700 meters.
(12:43):
And so we've had four different dogs over the course of the study.
One of them is retired because of a heart murmur and she is now my pet.
One of them contracted a tick-borne disease and passed away.
And we've got the two dogs that are still working.
But between all of them, it's just about 300 scats that they found.
(13:05):
That's amazing.
You know, I try to keep this podcast somewhat clean, but I guess you can say
these dogs really know their stuff.
Poop.
Poop.
They really know their poop.
You can fill in the word that I prefer to say, but won't.
Yes, that's great.
(13:25):
And then, yeah, vervet monkeys.
Is that, do you think it's all the cheetahs in the area or just a couple
that have specialized in monkey hunting?
Well, as of right now, it's kind of one area that we've done the scat analysis
of.
So, since that time, that was in 2017 that she did that study, since that time,
(13:48):
we've been collecting the scats and they've been getting frozen and put on
ethanol and stored in the Kenya Wildlife Service forensic facilities.
And of course, 2020 took us back financially, getting the funding to run the
analysis.
What we're going to be doing, the first time we did the analysis, we used hair
(14:11):
from within the scat.
So basically, you put the poop into a washing machine, you wash it so that only
the hair remains.
Then you put the hair in some ethanol and you take 10 hairs out of the
sample and you look at the hair itself from the follicle and every hair
follicle looks differently.
(14:32):
It's obviously quite time consuming, takes a lot of space, takes a lot of
effort.
And that's how Noreen did that first study with only 200, with only 200
samples.
She had to find a cheetah scat in it, a cheetah hair in it, and then
look at what the prey base was.
So a far more technically advanced way of doing this is to use genetic analysis
(14:57):
to do that.
More expensive, less time consuming.
And obviously, molecular doesn't take up as much space.
You don't need to have 20 slides from each cheetah scat.
You have one tiny little vial.
So that's what we were kind of doing, is doing all the fundraising to not just
(15:20):
do one area, but to conduct a full national cheetah survey.
So that's what we're doing right now, is we did all the pilot work and we've
developed a methodology that we're using for a full national survey.
That hasn't been the only thing that my staff do, because obviously we have our
one field base where conducting the pilot studies is a part of it, but also
(15:42):
working with the community and conflict mitigation is the other part of what
they do.
And so, yeah, we have the funding now for the vehicle that we need, the camping
equipment, and for being able to run genetic analysis on hopefully in the end
of a two to three year program, we'll have a thousand cheetah scats at the end
(16:03):
from all over Kenya.
The ideal is to be able to do something that's called circuit scaping, which is
similar to how electricity or water, one runs through a circuit.
Genetics runs across a region in a very similar way.
So circuit scaping, we'll take a look at the population genetics, but also how
(16:24):
related those populations are to each other and where the barriers are to
genetic stability in Kenya.
So that's the long term part of it.
So three to five years from now, we should be able to have a map of
how genes of cheetahs travel across Kenya.
That's great.
I know so many people and people that listen to the show that have like a
(16:46):
vision of what wildlife conservation is, but I don't think many people
visualize washing cheetah scat in a washing machine to collect hairs as part of
conservation.
But it's amazing how many forms conservation takes.
But, you know, as a child, don't we all want to play with mud and play
(17:07):
with poop?
And I get to do that as a 60 year old adult.
Some of us still do.
That's great.
Yeah, you mentioned earlier, and I think we all visualize how people and
cultures vary from from country to country, even regions to region.
But you're talking about how the cheetahs act and behave differently from
(17:28):
Namibia to Kenya.
Can you explain that a little bit more?
How different they are?
Yeah, so first of all, in Namibia, the cheetah is the subspecies Asinonyx
jubatus jubatus.
And in southern Africa, their body structure is quite a bit bigger.
(17:49):
Their their head is not as large compared to their body, and they're often
quite barrel chested.
Whereas as you start moving north, even where it's still jubatus jubatus, the
body structure begins to change.
So the cheetahs are a little more adapted to stealth because of the habitat in
(18:15):
which they live.
And we all have this vision of a cheetah running across the Serengeti at 70
kilometers per hour and taking down its prey.
And we think of the cheetah as that's all it does is it has to have
these open, large spaces in order to hunt.
(18:36):
But when we began discovering that these cheetahs in the Ukumbani area were
taking vervet monkeys, we started to look back at some of the earlier
literature from the 70s and even late 60s that mentioned cheetahs and what kind
(18:56):
of habitat the cheetah lived in.
And here in Kenya, the cheetahs from way back in the early 1900s were
documented to live in thick bush areas.
And so everything that had been studied up until this point about cheetahs and
the open plains pretty much said that cheetahs were not adaptable.
(19:16):
And I think what's been exciting to me is to actually be able to learn that
they're a lot more adaptable than we originally gave them credit for and that
the stealth hunting is not uncommon.
So we also found hyraxes to be a favorite snack food of the cheetahs in Kenya,
and hyraxes are found in rocky, bushy areas that you would not think that that
(19:42):
would be where the cheetah is hunting.
So I think that we know that the cheetah population is still declining across
its range.
We know that it's mostly land use change and climate change that are causing
the downward trend of cheetahs along with so many other species.
(20:02):
But what we're also learning is that with their adaptability, if we give them
the space, they can survive.
And they've survived for millions of years from two genetic bottlenecks that
we've documented in early historic studies.
So I think that's what's exciting about doing this is, you know, sometimes it
(20:26):
can get overwhelming and depressing because these species are still declining.
But if we can give them the opportunities, they can survive.
And I think that's what's exciting about the work that I do.
Yeah, I find, you know, dipping my toe into conservation from here to here and
there as well, it's I think a lot of us have like kind of an even
(20:48):
balance of optimism and pessimism, just like we want the best for these
species.
You want them to thrive and be around for generations to come.
But then seeing the realities of like the strife and the conflict and the
natural challenges they face can be kind of heartbreaking sometimes.
(21:10):
But yes, you know, I talked, you know, I know a lot of conservationists that
I've talked to them and we want to be in this field and doing what you're
doing.
If you didn't have the optimism that you can make a difference, that you can
make an impact.
And I know Action for Cheetahs is making an impact with cheetahs and I really
(21:30):
appreciate the work you're doing.
Thanks.
One, you know, one of the things we live for is, you know, to have those
positive moments.
And I think for me, one of one of those moments for me was when I
received a call from one of my field officers that said I heard her called him
because he found some baby cheetahs in a washed out riverbed and it was
(21:54):
starting to rain.
And he was worried that those cheetahs were going to drown.
Those very same herders five years ago would have just killed those cubs when
they found them.
And they called us because they wanted us to save them.
And I think that's the impact that conservation projects can have on a
community because cheetahs will not survive unless people are a part of that
(22:16):
survival.
That's an amazing impact.
I think that's a great like high point to kind of wrap up this show with.
But yeah, that's great.
So if people want to, people are listening, want to learn more about cheetahs
and Action for Cheetahs and donate or get involved, where can they go?
So we have a website, actionforcheetahs.org, and you can look it up.
(22:40):
Our website's a little outdated, I have to admit, but we're working on that.
And that's where you can go to donate.
It accepts PayPal and credit cards.
And also every fall I go on a tour in the U.S. and I speak
at several different zoos.
So watch our website, watch our Facebook page, and you'll find what locations
(23:04):
I'm going to be at when.
So I usually go home for the American Association of Zookeepers Conference
because to take a full loop after raising funds for so many years for Bowling
for Rhinos, I now receive funds from Bowling for Rhinos.
So your local zookeeper chapters that get involved with Bowling for Rhinos,
that helps cheetahs too.
(23:25):
That's many zoos throughout the country.
And I got excited when you guys started talking about Bowling for Rhinos
because I'm wearing one of my Bowling for Rhinos shirts.
That's awesome.
That's also how I found my way to LAWA is through Bowling for Rhinos.
LA has been very successful in that event over the past decade.
And yeah, it's a great organization.
(23:45):
And yeah, some of those funds do go to cheetah conservation, which is very
exciting.
So if you're near a zoo that has an AAZK chapter, American Association of
Zookeepers, follow them and see if they have a Bowling for Rhinos event.
I recommend attending, supporting, and helping out.
So actionforcheetahs.org, go check it out.
(24:05):
There'll be, I'll have a link in the show notes for this episode, as well as
your social media links where people can go and follow them.
Mike, thank you so much for your time and for including me on your podcast.
It's my pleasure.
Thank you for coming on, waking up early in the morning and spending some time
with me.
I really appreciate it.
(24:26):
And I look forward to hopefully seeing you again later this year when you're
back in the States.
Hope so, too.
All right.
Take care.
Thanks, Mary.
Big thanks to Mary Weickstro for joining the podcast today and calling in from
the other side of the planet, all the way from Kenya.
(24:47):
It was a delight talking to her.
I hope you all learned something about cheetahs.
And if you want to learn more, I suggest go to their web page,
actionforcheetahs.org.
Check them out on Instagram at Action for Cheetahs.
Learn about cheetahs, make a donation, support the work she's doing.
We all love cheetahs, right?
We want to see them around for years and years to come.
(25:08):
And if you're enjoying the podcast, please like and review.
Follow me on Instagram at Wild Tales Pod.
Follow me on Blue Sky, just at Wild Tales.
You can email anything you want.
Questions, comments, stories, whatever.
Just want to say hi?
You can just say hi.
(25:28):
I'll respond.
Email at wildtalespod at gmail.com.
As always, that's tail spelled T-A-I-L-S.
I look forward to hearing from you and hopefully you stick with us because I
got some more great interviews coming up in the future and can't wait for you
to hear them.
In the meantime, stay wild, my friends.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hello and welcome into the Wild Tales Podcast.
I am your host, Mike Bona, and thank you all for returning to listen to another
episode.
Unless it's your first time, then just keep listening.
Don't go anywhere.
I got a real great guest, a real good story coming up.
Just trust me.
It's good.
You'll like it.
I'm glad you found me.
I don't know how you did.
(00:40):
Hopefully someone recommended the podcast to you, as I suggest for all my
listeners to do.
Please, this podcast is growing.
I'm so excited to see that, but I'm greedy and I would like it to grow
faster.
But in the meantime, for today's episode, I'm thrilled to introduce Mary
Weikstra.
She's the founder and director of Action for Cheetahs in Kenya.
(01:01):
Mary has dedicated her life to cheetah conservation, working tirelessly.
I'm not going to edit.
I'm going to try it again.
Working tirelessly to protect one of the world's most endangered big cats.
Her work isn't just about studying cheetahs.
It's about understanding the delicate balance between wildlife and local
communities, working with farmers, and finding ways for humans and predators to
(01:25):
coexist.
In today's episode, she shares an incredible story from the field, one of her
earliest and most surprising observations about cheetahs.
So stay tuned and listen to that one.
Let's get ready for a deep dive into the world of cheetahs, the realities of
conservation, and the passion that drives it all.
Let's jump right in.
Ladies and gentlemen, here's Mary Weikstra.
(01:51):
All right.
Well, thank you, Mary, for joining Wild Tales all the way on the other side of
the world.
As we were just discussing on our own, you're in Kenya.
I'm in Los Angeles.
You're drinking your morning juice.
I have my little special evening drink.
We won't say what it is.
Mm.
Mm-hmm.
You could probably guess.
(02:12):
So you're the founder and president of Action for Cheetahs.
I want to get into your story, but real quick, you want to tell us a
little bit about what Action for Cheetahs is and what you guys do?
Yeah.
So Action for Cheetahs in Kenya is a nonprofit organization registered as a
501c3 in the States.
(02:33):
We began working in Kenya in 2001 when I was still under the Cheetah
Conservation Fund.
In 2009, we registered our own organization and formed Action for Cheetahs in
Kenya, which is actually under our own nonprofit organization called
(02:55):
Carnivore's Livelihoods and Landscapes.
And we set it up here in Kenya so that we could hire employees here and
follow all of the right protocols legally, but also because we needed to be
able to do our own fundraising efforts.
So what we do is obviously study cheetahs, as Action for Cheetahs would say,
(03:19):
but we look at human wildlife conflict mitigation.
We look at cheetah distribution and cheetah diet and basically monitoring the
population of cheetahs throughout Kenya.
But we have focused projects right now up in Samburu, which is in northern
Kenya, where that's where our employees are based and where our field camp is.
(03:42):
Fantastic.
Yeah.
Several years ago, my wife and I were in Kenya and we went to the Lewa
Wildlife Conservancy.
And that's like one of the top animals on our list was to see a cheetah.
And I know it can be kind of hit and miss in some of these places.
Sometimes you get lucky.
Sometimes you don't.
And I think on our first drive, like 20 minutes in, we came right across a
(04:03):
cheetah just lying in the grass, just posing for us, just waiting for us.
It was beautiful.
Yes.
But working out there, doing cheetah conservation, I'm sure you get to see a
lot more cheetahs than that one I did.
And I'm guessing you got a good cheetah story to tell me, or maybe a couple.
Yeah.
(04:23):
So just to kind of step back into the Lewa side of things too, that's actually
where I saw my first wild cheetah as well.
I was a zookeeper in the U.S. I worked at Binder Park Zoo in Michigan
and then moved to Utah's Hogle Zoo as an exhibit designer.
And that was when I got into the American Association of Zookeepers and I began
(04:46):
doing fundraising and working with the zookeeper chapter on our bowling for
rhinos.
So because I was trying so hard to win the trip to Africa, I actually decided
that I was going to take a second mortgage out on my house.
And I traveled to Lewa to meet Anna Mert.
And similar to you, on the first drive that we had actually from the airport
(05:09):
out towards Lewa is when I saw the first wild cheetah.
And I had worked with cheetahs at both zoos.
So that was number one on my bucket list as well.
Little did I know at that time that the next direction that I would be taking
would be to actually study cheetahs.
So about six years after that, a friend and I decided we wanted to do some
(05:31):
volunteer projects.
And so we sent out applications to several organizations and the Cheetah
Conservation Fund happened to be one of those organizations that accepted us as
volunteers.
And so that's kind of how I got my start was basically through zoos, through
volunteering and through reaching out to do a project in Kenya.
(05:52):
But when I came to Kenya, I had spent some time at the Cheetah Conservation
Fund prior to that.
And I felt like I was just going to be able to implement some of the
same programs using the model of the Cheetah Conservation Fund.
But when I got to Kenya, I found out that the cheetahs here are quite
(06:13):
different.
The people are definitely quite different from the people in Namibia.
The landscape is very different.
Instead of open plains and bushland, we have from forests to savannas that that
are quite bush encroached as well, some native and some invasive as well.
But it was it was a really different landscape.
(06:36):
So as a part of of starting to set up the project, of course, one of
the first things you want to do is monitor cheetahs and learn more about the
cheetah behavior.
So we did put some radio collars on some of the cheetahs in our first study
area.
And in tracking the cheetahs, what you do did back then when your technology
(06:57):
was a little bit not as advanced as this today, what we would do is we
would triangulate the sound, the ticking sound of the of the cheetah radio
collar.
And then we would go on foot to try to get visuals of those cheetahs.
And so as we're walking into some fairly thick bush area, the vervet monkeys
(07:18):
started to make a lot of their alarm calls and us thinking that we were still
a little ways away from the cheetah and the vervet monkeys were were screaming
because of us.
Suddenly, this happened to be a mother cheetah that had five cubs.
She was radio collared because she was a problem cheetah.
And we were just trying to make sure that her and her cubs were OK by
(07:39):
trying to get a visual.
And so the vervet monkeys were kind of down in the lower parts of the branches,
jumping and making their alarm calls.
And suddenly all six cheetahs came running out of the bush in our direction.
And the mother cheetah jumped up off the ground.
She jumped about four feet in the air, grabbed one of the vervet monkeys, put
(08:00):
it in her mouth.
You know how a cat that grabs a toy will stick it in the mouth and
then run.
She did this with the vervet monkey.
She ran off.
The other five cubs, which were subadults, were running in all directions.
And that was the first time that I had ever heard of a cheetah killing a
vervet monkey.
Of course, I was with some of my field officers and one of the field officers
(08:24):
grabbed me by the shoulders and actually held me in front of him.
And I felt like, you know, hey, let go of me type thing.
And he said, you know, when when you feel safe, you actually put what makes you
feel safe in front of you.
So so that was a little alarming.
And then the three of us, we looked at each other and said, did anybody get
(08:44):
a picture of that?
And of course, it was just such a shocker to have these six cheetahs running
around us that none of us did get a picture.
So we had no proof that the cheetah ate a vervet monkey other than three of
us saw it with our with our eyes.
I called a few people.
I said, you know, is that normal?
Do cheetahs eat monkeys?
No, no, cheetahs don't ever eat monkeys.
(09:06):
Fast forward to about six years later, we began doing cheetah fecal studies,
scat analysis, poop, whatever you want to call it.
And.
The master student, Noreen Mutoro, who was doing the analysis of the cheetah
scat that we had been collecting, gave me a call one afternoon and said, Mary,
(09:28):
I found something really unusual.
She said there's a hand of a vervet monkey in one of the scats of the
cheetah.
So now we had two incidences documenting that cheetahs will eat vervet monkeys.
So at least get a picture of the hand.
We do have a picture of a hand, actually.
(09:49):
Yes.
You know, I don't know if I want to see it, but how how adaptable the
cheetahs actually are.
And what we kind of needed to then find out next was that like a last
ditch adaptation to habitat loss?
Or is that because cheetahs are more adaptable than we originally thought they
(10:12):
were?
So we've continued since then to do scat analysis.
What we actually do now, because that first study, our field officers found
about 300 poops that they thought could potentially be cheetah.
But in Noreen's study, only 27 of those cheetahs, of those scats actually
(10:35):
belong to a cheetah.
So we knew we had to come up with a better way to identify and find
cheetahs.
And we now have a scat detection dog program that we use domestic dogs to
locate cheetah poop.
And then we don't have to have the radio collars on.
We don't have to go trucking in the bush the same way that we that we
(10:56):
did searching for a little bleeping noise.
But our dogs are able to find the scat.
And in the studies that we've done so far, our dogs have found over 300 cheetah
scats across different areas of Kenya.
And we now have another student who is doing genetic analysis and diet
analysis.
(11:17):
So we don't have the results on how many more monkeys, but yeah.
Yeah.
And the dogs, they can tell the difference between cheetah scat and lion scat
and leopard scat, like all the other poops you'll find in the wild, huh?
It's amazing how keen a sense of smell a dog can have.
(11:38):
A cheetah has 30 million sensors in their nose and they actually can smell in
3D.
So similar to how we see in 3D, the dog finds its direction using its nose
way better than we do.
But I will say cheetah scat has a very pungent odor.
And there are times that as we get close to where the dog is indicating like,
(11:59):
whoop, now I know why he found it.
But yeah, when it's fresh scat, cheetah scat has a very strong pungent smell.
So yeah, the dogs, one of our dogs actually found a scat from about 700 meters,
almost a kilometer away.
That's a half a mile away from the track that we were searching on.
(12:20):
He basically just took off in the direction and the handler recognized that the
dog had a ascent and we went in the direction of where the scat was.
And it was when we documented from where he first saw the dog have an
indication to where the scat was, was 700 meters.
(12:43):
And so we've had four different dogs over the course of the study.
One of them is retired because of a heart murmur and she is now my pet.
One of them contracted a tick-borne disease and passed away.
And we've got the two dogs that are still working.
But between all of them, it's just about 300 scats that they found.
(13:05):
That's amazing.
You know, I try to keep this podcast somewhat clean, but I guess you can say
these dogs really know their stuff.
Poop.
Poop.
They really know their poop.
You can fill in the word that I prefer to say, but won't.
Yes, that's great.
(13:25):
And then, yeah, vervet monkeys.
Is that, do you think it's all the cheetahs in the area or just a couple
that have specialized in monkey hunting?
Well, as of right now, it's kind of one area that we've done the scat analysis
of.
So, since that time, that was in 2017 that she did that study, since that time,
(13:48):
we've been collecting the scats and they've been getting frozen and put on
ethanol and stored in the Kenya Wildlife Service forensic facilities.
And of course, 2020 took us back financially, getting the funding to run the
analysis.
What we're going to be doing, the first time we did the analysis, we used hair
(14:11):
from within the scat.
So basically, you put the poop into a washing machine, you wash it so that only
the hair remains.
Then you put the hair in some ethanol and you take 10 hairs out of the
sample and you look at the hair itself from the follicle and every hair
follicle looks differently.
(14:32):
It's obviously quite time consuming, takes a lot of space, takes a lot of
effort.
And that's how Noreen did that first study with only 200, with only 200
samples.
She had to find a cheetah scat in it, a cheetah hair in it, and then
look at what the prey base was.
So a far more technically advanced way of doing this is to use genetic analysis
(14:57):
to do that.
More expensive, less time consuming.
And obviously, molecular doesn't take up as much space.
You don't need to have 20 slides from each cheetah scat.
You have one tiny little vial.
So that's what we were kind of doing, is doing all the fundraising to not just
(15:20):
do one area, but to conduct a full national cheetah survey.
So that's what we're doing right now, is we did all the pilot work and we've
developed a methodology that we're using for a full national survey.
That hasn't been the only thing that my staff do, because obviously we have our
one field base where conducting the pilot studies is a part of it, but also
(15:42):
working with the community and conflict mitigation is the other part of what
they do.
And so, yeah, we have the funding now for the vehicle that we need, the camping
equipment, and for being able to run genetic analysis on hopefully in the end
of a two to three year program, we'll have a thousand cheetah scats at the end
(16:03):
from all over Kenya.
The ideal is to be able to do something that's called circuit scaping, which is
similar to how electricity or water, one runs through a circuit.
Genetics runs across a region in a very similar way.
So circuit scaping, we'll take a look at the population genetics, but also how
(16:24):
related those populations are to each other and where the barriers are to
genetic stability in Kenya.
So that's the long term part of it.
So three to five years from now, we should be able to have a map of
how genes of cheetahs travel across Kenya.
That's great.
I know so many people and people that listen to the show that have like a
(16:46):
vision of what wildlife conservation is, but I don't think many people
visualize washing cheetah scat in a washing machine to collect hairs as part of
conservation.
But it's amazing how many forms conservation takes.
But, you know, as a child, don't we all want to play with mud and play
(17:07):
with poop?
And I get to do that as a 60 year old adult.
Some of us still do.
That's great.
Yeah, you mentioned earlier, and I think we all visualize how people and
cultures vary from from country to country, even regions to region.
But you're talking about how the cheetahs act and behave differently from
(17:28):
Namibia to Kenya.
Can you explain that a little bit more?
How different they are?
Yeah, so first of all, in Namibia, the cheetah is the subspecies Asinonyx
jubatus jubatus.
And in southern Africa, their body structure is quite a bit bigger.
(17:49):
Their their head is not as large compared to their body, and they're often
quite barrel chested.
Whereas as you start moving north, even where it's still jubatus jubatus, the
body structure begins to change.
So the cheetahs are a little more adapted to stealth because of the habitat in
(18:15):
which they live.
And we all have this vision of a cheetah running across the Serengeti at 70
kilometers per hour and taking down its prey.
And we think of the cheetah as that's all it does is it has to have
these open, large spaces in order to hunt.
(18:36):
But when we began discovering that these cheetahs in the Ukumbani area were
taking vervet monkeys, we started to look back at some of the earlier
literature from the 70s and even late 60s that mentioned cheetahs and what kind
(18:56):
of habitat the cheetah lived in.
And here in Kenya, the cheetahs from way back in the early 1900s were
documented to live in thick bush areas.
And so everything that had been studied up until this point about cheetahs and
the open plains pretty much said that cheetahs were not adaptable.
(19:16):
And I think what's been exciting to me is to actually be able to learn that
they're a lot more adaptable than we originally gave them credit for and that
the stealth hunting is not uncommon.
So we also found hyraxes to be a favorite snack food of the cheetahs in Kenya,
and hyraxes are found in rocky, bushy areas that you would not think that that
(19:42):
would be where the cheetah is hunting.
So I think that we know that the cheetah population is still declining across
its range.
We know that it's mostly land use change and climate change that are causing
the downward trend of cheetahs along with so many other species.
(20:02):
But what we're also learning is that with their adaptability, if we give them
the space, they can survive.
And they've survived for millions of years from two genetic bottlenecks that
we've documented in early historic studies.
So I think that's what's exciting about doing this is, you know, sometimes it
(20:26):
can get overwhelming and depressing because these species are still declining.
But if we can give them the opportunities, they can survive.
And I think that's what's exciting about the work that I do.
Yeah, I find, you know, dipping my toe into conservation from here to here and
there as well, it's I think a lot of us have like kind of an even
(20:48):
balance of optimism and pessimism, just like we want the best for these
species.
You want them to thrive and be around for generations to come.
But then seeing the realities of like the strife and the conflict and the
natural challenges they face can be kind of heartbreaking sometimes.
(21:10):
But yes, you know, I talked, you know, I know a lot of conservationists that
I've talked to them and we want to be in this field and doing what you're
doing.
If you didn't have the optimism that you can make a difference, that you can
make an impact.
And I know Action for Cheetahs is making an impact with cheetahs and I really
(21:30):
appreciate the work you're doing.
Thanks.
One, you know, one of the things we live for is, you know, to have those
positive moments.
And I think for me, one of one of those moments for me was when I
received a call from one of my field officers that said I heard her called him
because he found some baby cheetahs in a washed out riverbed and it was
(21:54):
starting to rain.
And he was worried that those cheetahs were going to drown.
Those very same herders five years ago would have just killed those cubs when
they found them.
And they called us because they wanted us to save them.
And I think that's the impact that conservation projects can have on a
community because cheetahs will not survive unless people are a part of that
(22:16):
survival.
That's an amazing impact.
I think that's a great like high point to kind of wrap up this show with.
But yeah, that's great.
So if people want to, people are listening, want to learn more about cheetahs
and Action for Cheetahs and donate or get involved, where can they go?
So we have a website, actionforcheetahs.org, and you can look it up.
(22:40):
Our website's a little outdated, I have to admit, but we're working on that.
And that's where you can go to donate.
It accepts PayPal and credit cards.
And also every fall I go on a tour in the U.S. and I speak
at several different zoos.
So watch our website, watch our Facebook page, and you'll find what locations
(23:04):
I'm going to be at when.
So I usually go home for the American Association of Zookeepers Conference
because to take a full loop after raising funds for so many years for Bowling
for Rhinos, I now receive funds from Bowling for Rhinos.
So your local zookeeper chapters that get involved with Bowling for Rhinos,
that helps cheetahs too.
(23:25):
That's many zoos throughout the country.
And I got excited when you guys started talking about Bowling for Rhinos
because I'm wearing one of my Bowling for Rhinos shirts.
That's awesome.
That's also how I found my way to LAWA is through Bowling for Rhinos.
LA has been very successful in that event over the past decade.
And yeah, it's a great organization.
(23:45):
And yeah, some of those funds do go to cheetah conservation, which is very
exciting.
So if you're near a zoo that has an AAZK chapter, American Association of
Zookeepers, follow them and see if they have a Bowling for Rhinos event.
I recommend attending, supporting, and helping out.
So actionforcheetahs.org, go check it out.
(24:05):
There'll be, I'll have a link in the show notes for this episode, as well as
your social media links where people can go and follow them.
Mike, thank you so much for your time and for including me on your podcast.
It's my pleasure.
Thank you for coming on, waking up early in the morning and spending some time
with me.
I really appreciate it.
(24:26):
And I look forward to hopefully seeing you again later this year when you're
back in the States.
Hope so, too.
All right.
Take care.
Thanks, Mary.
Big thanks to Mary Weickstro for joining the podcast today and calling in from
the other side of the planet, all the way from Kenya.
(24:47):
It was a delight talking to her.
I hope you all learned something about cheetahs.
And if you want to learn more, I suggest go to their web page,
actionforcheetahs.org.
Check them out on Instagram at Action for Cheetahs.
Learn about cheetahs, make a donation, support the work she's doing.
We all love cheetahs, right?
We want to see them around for years and years to come.
(25:08):
And if you're enjoying the podcast, please like and review.
Follow me on Instagram at Wild Tales Pod.
Follow me on Blue Sky, just at Wild Tales.
You can email anything you want.
Questions, comments, stories, whatever.
Just want to say hi?
You can just say hi.
(25:28):
I'll respond.
Email at wildtalespod at gmail.com.
As always, that's tail spelled T-A-I-L-S.
I look forward to hearing from you and hopefully you stick with us because I
got some more great interviews coming up in the future and can't wait for you
to hear them.
In the meantime, stay wild, my friends.
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