Africa

Africa, South Africa, Our Burning Planet, DM168

New hope for Mozambique cheetah revival after SA cats make high-stakes ‘beast of a journey’

Justin Rodger. Photo: Instagram

11 May 2025

After a gruelling journey, a dozen cheetahs from South Africa arrived in Mozambique in a high-stakes conservation project aiming to revive the species in an area where it has nearly been lost.

A shimmering full moon rose into the sky as the 12 cheetahs and a bedraggled crew of humans completed their arduous and sometimes hair-raising journey by plane, tractor, bakkie and boat from South Africa to the wilds of remote Tete province in Mozambique.

More than 50 hours after the cats had been darted in South Africa and placed in specially made crates, the moment had arrived for their release into the bomas that would serve as their temporary home before their final sprint back into freedom.

And what a long, strange trip it had been.

Renowned cheetah conservationist Vincent van der Merwe, who took his own life in Riyadh on 16 March, was a key architect of the project and it will be a fitting epitaph to his legacy if it proves a success.

“It’s a massive logistical operation. It’s going to be an absolute beast of a journey,” he told me in a phone interview three weeks before his death.

Crossing the crocodile- and hippo-infested Zambezi River with the cargo of cheetahs. (Photo: Kolby Edwards / Mutambo Films)

I was invited to tag along with the cats and their handlers from Johannesburg to the Middle Zambezi Valley to report on their translocation.

The journey – which was indeed “an absolute beast” – underscored the unexpected challenges that confront wildlife relocations, as well as the commitment of the conservationists behind such projects.

And for the cheetahs, there is hope that their range has now been expanded, heralding a new chapter in the history of this majestic species.

The long road from Tete to the Zambezi with the cheetahs. (Photo: Kolby Edwards / Mutambo Films)

A bachelor rocks up

The seeds of this translocation were planted in 2023 when a lone male cheetah appeared out of the blue in the 210,000ha Panyame Conservancy in Mozambique.

Justin Rodger, a Zimbabwean and passionate conservationist whose family runs a hunting concession there, was thrilled at the appearance of an animal that, as far as he was aware, had not been seen in the area for decades.

In the wider Zambezi Valley there are believed to be only about five cheetahs left, Van der Merwe had told me.

“I thought we need cheetahs here and it is prime cheetah habitat with lots of game,” Rodger told me.

The region is teeming with impala and other antelope, as well as buffalo and elephant. Predators abound, including lion, leopard, hyena and wild dog.

Checking on the cargo. (Photo: Kolby Edwards, Mutambo Films)

Rodger hatched a plan with Van der Merwe and his organisation, The Metapopulation Initiative, to translocate South African cheetahs to the reserve and bring the lone male some company.

The initial plan was to move 16 cheetahs, but issues with permitting meant only 12 were eventually cleared to go.

The dozen – six males and six females – were captured from reserves in the Northern Cape, the Eastern Cape, North West, Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal, and quarantined in three locations. All are at the prime breeding age of two years or more.

The reserves they were drawn from pointedly have free-ranging lion and leopard populations, providing a crucial upbringing for the predatory landscape of the Middle Zambezi Valley.

“It is preferable for any cheetah going to an area with lions, leopard and hyena to have been exposed to those species beforehand. It increases their chances of survival,” Mike Toft, an affable KwaZulu-Natal-based wildlife vet who accompanied the cats on their journey, told me.

The translocation was funded by the Origins Foundation, which is focused on the sustainable use of natural resources, including hunting, but the cheetahs – as a protected species – will not be hunted.

“Who else is looking to put cheetahs back into big habitat landscapes and enhance biodiversity? Look around, look at who is doing big conservation projects. A lot of times you will be surprised it’s hunters,” Robbie Kroger, the founder and executive director of the Origins Foundation, told me.

“This move was funded by hunters to move a species that will never be hunted. So the bigger question is why? Why did we do it and why will we continue to invest in the project over the next five years?

“Simply because it’s the right thing to do for wildlife conservation and more specifically cheetah conservation.”

One of the translocated cheetahs stands over its meal – part of an impala – in its boma in its new home in Mozambique. (Photo: Kolby Edwards / Mutambo Films)

Piss-proofing a plane

For this correspondent, the journey began on 15 April at the private Fireblade terminal at OR Tambo International Airport.

The cats had been in bomas in South Africa – some since November – while the permits were processed. Darted and sedated late in the afternoon the previous day, they had been trucked to Fireblade for the aerial leg of their journey.

Toft immediately smelled a problem.

“These wooden crates are not waterproof. The plane is going to reek of cheetah urine,” he said.

This observation triggered a hasty trip to the nearest Builders to get plastic sheeting to spread beneath the cat crates on the plane.

The plane piss-proofed, the crates were loaded by conveyor belt into the passenger section, where 23 seats had been removed to make room for the catty cargo.

During the flight to Tete, wildlife vet Andy Fraser grabbed a quick cat nap atop the crates – a wise move, as there was a long night and day ahead.

Despite the cats having been sedated and hydrated intravenously and subcutaneously, both Toft and Fraser were extremely concerned about their welfare.

“Cheetahs are very fragile,” Toft told me. Toft and Fraser were also understandably stressed – a lot can go wrong in such an operation and the stakes in this one were sky-high.

We landed at Tete airport at about 4.45pm and there was a whirl of activity as passports were stamped and the cheetahs were offloaded onto Hiluxes and Land Cruisers.

Plans to fly the cats from the international airport at Tete to the relocation site had to be abruptly abandoned because the runway at the reserve was waterlogged. After a prolonged dry spell, monster rains had erupted 48 hours before the cats’ scheduled arrival at Tete.

This brought plan B into play, which meant taking the cheetahs by road and river. But that’s a wildlife translocation: the unexpected means the script is seldom followed and improvisation is required.

As darkness descended, we set off in a convoy of six vehicles, five laden with cheetahs and one carrying diesel. It was literally a race against time.

Bakkie bashed

The first 160km was along a surprisingly good tar stretch. We then turned off onto a dirt track that would take us to the Zambezi. The ETA for the cheetahs’ arrival kept getting pushed back because the wretched state of the road – and the fact that we were hauling live cargo – significantly slowed our expected pace.

Cheetahs are the fastest land mammal on the planet, but on this trip they were often reduced to a jarring crawl.

At one point after midnight, one of the Land Cruisers got stuck in a rut. And shortly after dawn, one of the Hiluxes bashed into the one in front – thankfully it was the one carrying diesel, not cheetahs. But the crumpled hood and front end looked like the vehicle had been rammed by an enraged rhino.

One saving grace – for cheetahs and humans alike – was the weather, which was mostly overcast and relatively cool for this time of the year.

One of the Hilux bakkies involved in the translocation smashed into the back of the one carrying diesel en route. 16 April, 2025. (Photo: Ed Stoddard)

The surrounding landscape was a collage of green bush that would periodically thin out into agricultural settlements where maze, sunflowers and other crops were grown by subsistence farmers hard-hit by the El Niño-inspired drought last year.

The region – and the road – was now moist, a blessing for local farmers, but a curse for driving.

Zambezi crossing

Finally, at about 3pm on 16 April, the Zambezi River revealed itself amid the foliage. It was time for the watery leg of the journey.

The crates were lifted off the vehicles and carefully loaded onto motorised boats. The Zambezi was wide and muddy brown here, with the green hills of Zimbabwe looming to the west. It was also teeming with hippos and crocs – a point not lost on the occupants of my narrow banana boat, which followed the vessels carrying the cats.

After a trip of about 45 minutes, we reached a rustic lodge operated by Safaris De Moçambique on the headwaters of Lake Cahora Bassa, and the cheetahs were loaded onto vehicles for a short drive to another but much shorter watery crossing – the Panyame River, a Zambezi tributary.

The final trip to the bomas involved another rugged SUV and a tractor hauling a trailer at a snail’s pace. At this tropical latitude, night fell like a dark curtain and a lion grunted in the distance.

The cheetahs were distributed in seven bomas with sturdy, high chain-link fencing measuring 25x25m or 25x50m, depending on the number of cats released into each. The area was selected because the lone bachelor cheetah frequents this neck of the bush.

Some popped out of their boxes like corkscrews after their crate door was raised and others chose to remain inside initially.

Mike Toft. (Photo: X)

Vincent van der Merwe. (Photo: Supplied)

Andy Fraser. (Photo: Instagram)

Robbie Kroger. (Photo: Byland.co)

Justin Rodger. (Photo: Instagram)

‘Beyond our expectations’

The next morning was the big test: how had the cheetahs weathered the trip?

Some remained hidden from view in clumps of bush, but to my untrained eye the visible cats that moved around the confines of their bomas looked healthy.

“They are doing incredibly well. You see how active they are, their stiffness is gone,” Toft remarked as he observed an individual female he had monitored under quarantine. “They have exceeded our expectations.”

Hugo Pereira, a vet with the Mozambique Wildlife Alliance who joined the trek in Tete, agreed with Toft.

“The cheetahs look good,” he said as we stood at a distance from the bomas.

But it was also feeding time – the cheetah needed to eat after their long trip – and several impala dispatched by the lodge’s professional hunters were clinically cut up.

A professional hunter and I fed one of the cats, entering the boma and throwing a hunk of impala into the middle. The cheetah, hiding in a thicket, sprang out growling, and I inelegantly turned my back on it briefly and lunged away.

Turning around, I could see the cheetah was no threat, and we backed slowly out of the boma.

“We have shown that the cheetahs can be in crates for 50 hours or more. It’s not ideal and a shorter journey is preferable, but if push comes to shove it can be done,” Toft told me as we drove back to the lodge.

The cheetahs all have radio collars and are scheduled for release from the bomas on 15 May.

In 2022, Van der Merwe had overseen the transfer of cheetahs to India and Namibia from South Africa. All the cheetahs taken to India survived the journey, but the project became a flashpoint for criticism as it was near farming communities and several of the cats subsequently died.

But Fraser told me that the cheetah population was growing and now numbered 28.

“There are only two countries where cheetah populations are growing – South Africa and India,” he said.

Once widespread across Africa and Southwest Asia, cheetahs now occupy less than 10% of their historic range and only number about 7,000 in the wild.

Some mortality is also expected among the dozen transplants to Mozambique – the bush is unforgiving. But hopefully this wild region of Mozambique will also soon have a growing population of the cats. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

Categories:

Tags:

DM is much better if you are signed in...