REGINA AND JACK, LEVI AND DIESEL, ZIMBABWE

For Jack and Regina, their only source of food is a small plot of land for growing maize and vegetables. However, in recent years, their crops have failed, and with the worsening drought most of the local rivers and wells have dried up. This has forced them to go begging for water in surrounding areas. Sometimes they go for as long as a couple of months with little food, forced to live off handouts.

Diesel and Levi’s mother was killed by a farmer protecting his livestock. They came to Wild Is Life when they were about six weeks old, full of ringworm and very thin. Wild Is Life managed to pull them through, but because they were so young and so domesticated, it was decided that they were poor candidates for release.
They get taken for walks every day for enrichment. Fourteen years old when photographed, they have had healthy lives. In March 2021, Diesel died at age fifteen, a grand old age for a cheetah, whose average life span is 10-12 years.

The current situation for cheetahs in Africa is stark: driven out of over 90% of their historic range, the population across the continent is down to less than just 7,000 in 2021. At the current rate of decline, cheetahs are heading toward extinction.
As ever, habitat loss is one of the main reasons. With that also comes the decline and disappearance of the species that they prey on, as those in turn are killed by humans for bushmeat.

Photographed at Wild is Life, Zimbabwe, November 2020