Guardians of the Wild: Dr. Laurie Marker’s Mission to Save the Cheetahs

In this episode of On the Road with Paul Ward, Paul welcomes Dr. Laurie Marker, founder of the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF). Dr. Marker shares the inspiring story behind the creation of CCF, which began as an effort to prevent local farmers in Namibia, Africa, from killing cheetahs to protect their livestock. She describes how CCF became a model farm, implementing innovative solutions like the Livestock Guarding Dog program, which has successfully reduced livestock loss while protecting cheetahs and teaching sustainable farming practices. Dr. Marker also discusses Africa’s evolving conservation mindset over her 30+ years there, and CCF’s collaborations with the Namibian government to ensure cheetahs remain in the wild.

Throughout the conversation, Dr. Marker provides insights into cheetah behavior, the global population status, and the challenges of the illegal pet trade. She shares her journey from the U.S. to Africa and how CCF has grown into a research and educational center, offering ecotourism and outreach programs that engage locals and visitors alike. To learn more about CCF, support their mission, or visit their ecotourism lodge, listeners can explore www.cheetah.org, where they can also find ways to contribute to the conservation of these remarkable animals.

Watch the Full Episode Here

What you’ll learn in this episode:
0:05 Welcome to On the Road and introduction of our guest: Dr. Laurie Marker with the Cheetah Conservation Fund
0:44 We learn what The Cheetah Conservation Fund is
1:29 Dr. Laurie Marker’s involvement began because of local farmers killing cheetahs
2:28 The Cheetah Conservation Fund is located in Namibia, Africa and learn about it being a model farm
3:22 Dr. Marker describes the Livestock Guarding Dog that are used to keep the cheetahs and other wildlife away from the farm animals
4:45 The decrease in livestock loss because of the dog program being used and replicated by others as well as reteaching people to live with livestock
6:15 The change in Africa’s conservation mindset over the 30+ year period of Dr. Marker living there
7:04 How The Cheetah Conservation Fund works with the Namibia government to keep the animals free and in the wild other than for research and we learn more about that
8:58 More about how cheetahs live: Males, females, cubs, etc.
10:25 Dr. Marker gives insight on the global population of cheetahs and the illegal pet trade that occurs
13:15 The Cheetah Conservation Funds have multiple locations
14:57 Dr. Laurie Marker’s story and what made her move from the United States to Africa over 30 years ago
19:02 Finding answers to help the cheetahs, the communities that Dr. Laurie Marker and The Cheetah Conservation Fund works with to help their livelihood
20:39 Teaching the locals how to be sustainable, how and why the cheetahs may be killing their livestock
23:07 The Cheetah Conservation Fund has also turned into a learning center in Namibia and what the students learn
24:57 There is an Ecotourism lodge that is open to the public every day and learn more on social media and their website: www.cheetah.org
25:57 The Cheetah Conservation Fund is a 501c3 and how to get involved
26:14 How much does it cost to take care of a cheetah for a year?
27:31 The Cheetah Conservation Fund’s motto and a powerful quote by Dr. Laurie Marker
28:09 A special thank you to our sponsor: Opus Escrow

Related Episodes:
Bridging the Wild with Beth Pratt and the Highway 101 Animal Crossing
Vet Tales: Unveiling Holistic Animal Care with Dr. Rhiannon Fenton
Hear What All the Buzz is About: Larry Pender and the Jubilee HoneyBee Co

The Cheetah Conservation Fund:
www.cheetah.org
Mailing Address: Cheetah Conservation Fund P.O. Box 2496 Alexandria, VA 22301
Phone Number: 866-909-3399

Contact Paul Ward:
805-479-5004
paul@homeandranchteam.com

Have ideas for future episodes? We’d love to answer your questions – leave a comment! For any home buying or home selling needs in the Ventura County area of California, please reach out to Paul@HomeAndRanchTeam.com or visit www.HomeAndRanchTeam.com

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A special THANK YOU to our sponsor, OPUS ESCROW! Farm Talk with Paul Ward would not be possible without the support of our sponsor Opus Escrow. Supporting our sponsor ensures Farm Talk can provide listeners with the best possible episodes.

Paul Ward (00:05):

Hi friends, it’s Paul Ward, and welcome to On the Road. Well, we all have our favorite animal, horse, dog, cat. Maybe something wild like a bear. Well, today’s guest is truly next level. She moved from the United States to Africa to protect wild cheetahs. Dr. Laurie Marker with the Cheetah Conservation Fund. Welcome to On the Road.

Dr. Laurie Marker (00:28):

Thank you.

Paul Ward (00:29):

And we wanna thank our sponsor, Opus Escrow. So, I certainly wanna hear your story. It’s fascinating how you decided to move from the United States to Namibia. But first tell us what is the Cheetah Conservation Fund?

Dr. Laurie Marker (00:44):

Well, the Cheetah Conservation Fund is the leading organization in the world to try to keep cheetahs living free in the wild. And I’m based in Namibia, Africa. Little bit of ways away.

Paul Ward (00:56):

Right.

Dr. Laurie Marker (00:57):

From the United States right now. And so, our programs really revolve around working directly with the communities on whose land the cheetah’s living. The cheetah is a fast, big cat. Right. It’s the fastest land animal. It is one of the most unique of all the big cats. And they are found in Africa. And our job is to try to save them in the wild.

Paul Ward (01:22):

And I read that you were concerned, or you got involved because local farmers were just killing cheetahs.

Dr. Laurie Marker (01:29):

Right.

Paul Ward (01:29):

They were killing them to protect their goats, which seems crazy to kill these big, beautiful animals. But you took it upon yourself to make a change.

Dr. Laurie Marker (01:39):

Right. And I started my work in Africa in the middle seventies. And that’s when I actually found that farmers were killing cheetahs at such a high rate. And it was livestock farmers. And it was not only their goats, their sheep, but also their calves and their cattle. Much of Africa has kind of animals on the hoof that they travel. Many of ’em are pastoral or many of them are very poor. And with this, any loss to their livestock becomes a problem. And so, I think globally, we as people kill predators because we’re afraid of them.

Paul Ward (02:14):

Right.

Dr. Laurie Marker (02:15):

And what we try to do is to teach people how to live in harmony with not only the predators, but the rest of nature.

Paul Ward (02:21):

And so, you created this, the fund, the Cheetah Conservation Fund, and you’re located on a wildlife preserve?

Dr. Laurie Marker (02:28):

Yes. We’re based on about 150,000 acres.

Paul Ward (02:32):

Oh, that’s big.

Dr. Laurie Marker (02:33):

And it’s very big <laugh>. And we border onto a national park.

Paul Ward (02:37):

Okay.

Dr. Laurie Marker (02:38):

And there we do manage all of our wildlife. We’re also a model farm. And a part of what’s called a conservancy, and a conservancy is where you live with wildlife on your land instead of just in a national park, and you manage your livestock. And so you can all live together. Now, a lot of that though, for cheetahs is the fact that cheetahs aren’t found in protected areas. 80% of the remaining cheetahs are all found outside of protected areas. That’s why working with people becomes such an important part of the work that we do.

Paul Ward (03:10):

Interesting. And I read that you’re also using dogs to keep the cheetahs and the other wildlife away from the farm animals.

Dr. Laurie Marker (03:19):

Right.

Paul Ward (03:20):

How does that, how does that work?

Dr. Laurie Marker (03:22):

Well, there are big breeds of dogs, which are called livestock guarding dogs. And we use a dog that came from Turkey originally. It is actually, they’re a Turkish dog. It’s called the Kangal, or the Anatolian Shepherd. It’s a very large dog. And we breed and place these dogs when they’re puppies. Usually at about three months of age with the livestock. And they grow up with the livestock that they wanna protect. So, anything that they are growing up with, they will protect. And they do this by marking territory, by barking loudly, by saying anything that is around that’s not supposed to be there, they bark loudly, and they say, “Go away!” And most predators don’t wanna just come and get eaten or, you know, mauled by a dog. And I think a lot of people think that predators are livestock, you know, catching animals just because that’s what they’ll do. But really, if you protect your livestock, then indeed you can live in harmony with nature.

Paul Ward (04:29):

And I Would imagine you’ve seen a big drop in livestock kills using dogs and then training or working with local farmers to maybe acquire dogs and kind of replicate the program.

Dr. Laurie Marker (04:45):

Very much so. So, we see between an 80 to a hundred percent decrease of livestock loss for the people who have the dog. And we started the program about 30 years ago. We’ve been able to place over 800 dogs, and they are just absolutely incredible. We’ve got about a two-year waiting list. Everybody wants a dog. So, with that, we work harder at, you know, bringing new bloodlines in breeding them, selecting which farmers can get them, because you have to take care of the dog. And also, we say you have to train the farmer, and really not the dog. Because the dog’s very instinctual. But so, with our training programs, we have a program that we call Future Farmers of Africa. I grew up as a future farmer of America. I had dairy goats and was a judge around the country, and also grew up on the back of my horse. So, with that, I felt that that was a really appropriate way to help get the livestock farmers in Africa, a little bit more engaged in maybe Africa. Africa’s all about wildlife. Beautiful wildlife. Amazing wildlife. And yet how to live with the wildlife is something that we as humans around the world have forgot that we can do. Right. But it is doable. And that’s a lot of what we do, is we teach how to.

Paul Ward (06:04):

So, do you feel in your, I guess 30 plus years living in Africa that the continent is much more conservation minded than when you got there?

Dr. Laurie Marker (06:15):

I believe so. When I work throughout the cheetahs range; the cheetahs found in about 20 countries in about 33 populations. And out of that 20 of these populations are under a hundred individuals. So, I’ve actually brought people from throughout most of Africa’s cheetah range countries and train them at our training center in Namibia. And there it has been very worthwhile by working together with other people who understand people from the governments. And we’ve been trying hard to actually scale up the programs that we’ve developed in Namibia, in other African range countries for cheetahs.

Paul Ward (06:59):

Now, are you breeding cheetahs? Is that a silly question? Or is it all wild?

Dr. Laurie Marker (07:04):

All wild. We do not breed cheetahs, and in Namibia they don’t want captive animals or captive animals being bred. And that also can lead to the illegal wildlife pet trade. As something to think about. But we work together with the government to try to keep the animals free and in the wild. I mean, that’s what Africa’s all about. It’s not having them all in zoos like we do here in America. And so, from the Namibian perspective, we work together with the government and the people to try to have the animals living in the wild. But with that, we do end up with orphans and with these orphans, many of them cannot go back out into the wild. And so, then we have to take care of them. And then they’re oftentimes used in our ongoing research. We are a research organization, and what we are trying to do is understand more about the basic biology, the basic, you know, genetics of the cheetahs, how they live.

Dr. Laurie Marker (08:02):

So, we have a lot of very extensive research projects as well, which are very interesting. But we kind of wrote the book on how the cheetah lives. We are the first organization that’s dealt with cheetahs in the wild. And over the years that we’ve been doing this now many of our, we publish our papers and publish our research and then continually try to find out more about how to use that research into an applied conservation. Like the use of the livestock guardian dogs, farmers are having problems, we want to help them. But then on the other side, we wanted to understand more about the ecology of the cheetah. How they’re living out there in the wild. And they’ve got huge home ranges, larger ranges than any other animal actually in the world. Even though we think of the elephant as being so big. Covering a lot of area. Cheetahs’ home ranges are close to 800 square miles.

Paul Ward (08:55):

Wow. What In one individual?

Dr. Laurie Marker (08:57):

One individual.

Paul Ward (08:57):

Wow. That’s huge.

Dr. Laurie Marker (08:58):

It is huge. And they live in a very low density. So, cheetahs are interesting. Their behavior: male cheetahs bond together from the time they’re born; they stick together their entire lives. And that’s called a coalition.

Paul Ward (09:13):

Only males?

Dr. Laurie Marker (09:13):

Only males. And so, as the female has a litter of cubs, and she can have up to six, but four or five is usually average. The cubs will stay with their moms until they’re about 18 to 22 months. During that period of time, she’s covering huge areas, teaching them what the whole range look like. And then when the males are at about 18 (months) a year and a half or so they and the female cubs disperse together from the mother. And they stick together for maybe six months until dominant males come in, chase the young males away, and then we’ll breed the females. The females stay within their mother’s home range. So, it’s a matriarchal society, basically. So, we’ve learned all this and it’s really exciting, interesting to understand how they’re living. And then we can share that information back with the farming community to get people to know how they’re moving.

Paul Ward (10:10):

Do you feel that the breed is healthy? I mean, just because of conservation efforts and the population is growing versus what was happening, you know, 30 years ago when farmers were killing them off? Or is it kind of a tough question?

Dr. Laurie Marker (10:25):

It’s tough question because I have to say extinction takes time. And for the number of animals that had been killed before we set up our foundation and the work that we’ve done we have, are trying to stabilize these populations. And again, we have been able to stabilize the population in Namibia. The global population for cheetahs is only about 7,000 individuals.

Paul Ward (10:49):

That’s it?

Dr. Laurie Marker (10:50):

That’s it.

Paul Ward (10:50):

Oh, it’s tiny.

Dr. Laurie Marker (10:51):

It’s very tiny.

Paul Ward (10:52):

I did not realize that.

Dr. Laurie Marker (10:53):

And so then when you end up with very small pockets you end up with more in breeding. And that leads to other problems. The cheetahs also a species that lacks genetic diversity. And that goes back to many of our studies that started back in the early eighties when we discovered the lack of genetic diversity. Our partnerships have been with the Smithsonian, with the National Cancer Institute. And our research then really created a lot of what conservation biology is really about today, because it wasn’t just looking at the numbers of animals, it was understanding the overall health of them. And we started understanding that. And then as I moved to Namibia over 30 years ago, we started collecting this information that allowed us to piece together a lot of information in working with the governments, but also sharing that information back with our partners in zoos here in the United States or in Europe, where there are only about 2000 cheetahs living in captivity.

Dr. Laurie Marker (11:54):

And they still don’t breed all that well in captivity. But we’ve been able to help our captive zoo partners in understanding more about how to keep the cheetahs living healthy. With that it’s really important to keep them free and living in the wild. And not only are we dealing with the human wildlife conflict aspects in the Southern African area, but that is also a problem for the cheetah throughout its range. And another area that we work very closely in is in the Horn of Africa. And that is an area in Ethiopia and the Somaliland. The Somaliland is a breakaway of Somali. And Somaliland is an area that has the illegal wildlife pet trade. It was going through Somaliland very short distance over to Yemen and up into the Middle East, which is where many of the people there wanted to have cheetahs as pets. As a status symbol.

Paul Ward (12:56):

Gotcha.

Dr. Laurie Marker (12:57):

And so, over the last decade, we’ve been very involved in trying to stop the illegal wildlife pet trade. And that has been pretty devastating.

Paul Ward (13:08):

I did read that the Cheetah Conservation Fund, though, you’ve expanded beyond, I mean, you’ve got multiple locations.

Dr. Laurie Marker (13:15):

Locations, yes. Well, the next big location is that of Somaliland.

Paul Ward (13:19):

Okay.

Dr. Laurie Marker (13:21):

And because we’ve now got 97 cheetahs just in the last couple years that have come in to us that have been confiscated from the trade

Paul Ward (13:29):

Oh, they were captured alive and then taken by wildlife officials and then brought to you.

Dr. Laurie Marker (13:36):

Right. Right. Right.

Paul Ward (13:37):

They were on their way to the Middle East or wherever to be pets?

Dr. Laurie Marker (13:40):

Pets. But as they, if one cat makes it as a pet, as a cub, they’re caught as cubs. Four to five usually die for every one that might make it there. They will only have a lifespan for a year or two because the people don’t know how to take care of them properly. And so. It’s been very, very devastating for that Horn of Africa population, which is very, very small. And so. We’ve then taken a lot of our programs that we’ve developed in Namibia, like our farmer training program and our school education programs and have now adapted everything for the Horn of Africa. We also work out of East Africa, which was also where many of our programs have been adapted as well. And so, we’re trying to stop the trade. Much of it is driven by human wildlife conflict. And to try again to keep the cheetahs living free and in the wild by working with the communities. So, community support is really important.

Paul Ward (14:43):

So backtracking, what made you decide, I think it was 1990 to move from the US and what were you doing? And then all of a sudden say, “Hey, I’m moving to Africa. I need to, I wanna do this, I need to do this.”

Dr. Laurie Marker (14:57):

Right, right. Well, I did grow up down here in Southern California, and as I said, I grew up in the back of my horse and I was a pony clubber. I’m 4H and a Future Farmer of America. I was in agriculture and had moved from here southern California to Northern California and actually became a wine maker and a grape grower.

Paul Ward (15:24):

Interesting. So, you’re Napa region? Sonoma?

Dr. Laurie Marker (15:26):

Napa, yep. And then from there moved to Oregon as the new frontier. And I was the third bonded winery in all of Oregon and had started the Oregon wine industry. However, a wildlife park had just opened about five miles from my vineyard. And it grew, opened about the same time as the San Diego Wild Animal Park had started. Our park was called Wildlife Safari, modeled very similarly open free range. And we were one of the few places in the world that had cheetahs. And so, growing up with my background with animals, I got a job there to support my business. Although my job there took my life basically <laugh>. Right. And I ran the veterinary clinic and the cheetahs came under my care. And I was fascinated. Nobody in the world knew about cheetahs and I wanted to know everything there was to know about cheetahs. And I wrote to people around the world, and they basically wrote back and said, “When you find out something about cheetahs, let us know.”

Paul Ward (16:26):

Were you a viticulture person at the same time you were a vet?

Dr. Laurie Marker (16:30):

Yes.

Paul Ward (16:30):

Oh, interesting.

Dr. Laurie Marker (16:31):

And I’m not a vet, I’m a vet. I was a vet tech.

Paul Ward (16:33):

Gotcha.

Dr. Laurie Marker (16:34):

And grew up taking care of and working with the veterinarians my whole childhood and thought I was going to be a vet but ended up going into agriculture instead.

Paul Ward (16:45):

So, you fell in love with the cheetah ’cause you were at the wildlife safari.

Dr. Laurie Marker (16:48):

The wildlife safari

Paul Ward (16:49):

Safari in Oregon. And then you heard about the plight in Africa.

Dr. Laurie Marker (16:53):

Well, no, I found out about the plight in Africa, actually. I had a research project that I was asked to do in Namibia. And that was in the middle 1970s. And it was to find out if a captive born cheetah could go back out into the wild and learn how to hunt. Now I have to say, my life has come full circle because today we’re actually rehabilitating animals back into the wild where they have gone extinct. But I did the first research project with a cheetah that I had raised in Oregon and went over to Namibia and taught her how to hunt. But at the same time, that’s when I found out that farmers were killing eight to 900 cheetahs a year.

Paul Ward (17:34):

Wow.

Dr. Laurie Marker (17:34):

And in a decade when I was in Namibia finding this out and coming back to America and saying, “Hey, did you know that the cheetahs caught all these problems in the wild?” That nobody in the world seemed to care about. Nearly 10,000 cheetahs were killed by the farming community during that period of time.

Paul Ward (17:55):

Wow.

Dr. Laurie Marker (17:55):

And I kept going back to Namibia; kept going back to other areas of Africa. The same time I developed an entire national and then global captive program to help maintain the cheetahs in captivity. And our genetic research came into all of that as well. But we needed to know more about what the wild cheetah looked like, and we needed to stop the trade and the killing. And so from that point, I moved to the National Zoo and..

Paul Ward (18:23):

In Washington?

Dr. Laurie Marker (18:24):

In Washington, and I was running a research program there, which combined the aspects of genetics, reproductive physiology, vet medicine to look at wild populations. And so I was one of the first of our team to go over and put it all together to try to help save the endangered cheetah.

Dr. Laurie Marker (18:45):

And so, in 1990 when Namibia got its independence, I basically sold my belongings, got enough money for a Land Rover, moved to Namibia, and that was now almost 35 years ago. So that, that was my life. Who knew what was gonna happen.

Paul Ward (19:01):

Right.

Dr. Laurie Marker (19:02):

But I learned a lot about cheetahs. I’ve learned a lot about what their problems are. But what we’ve done is we’ve learned about the solutions. And the solutions are really about working closely together with communities, which, I had mentioned early on that most of the people that I’m working with are quite marginalized. Uneducated because of lack of education. Very, very poor. And the areas that the cheetah’s living in is very, very arid landscapes. We’re living in some of the driest desert landscapes. And then with that, trying to help these communities get out of poverty basically. And when a cheetah kills their livestock, that puts them even more into poverty.

Paul Ward (19:49):

Right.

Dr. Laurie Marker (19:50):

And so many of our programs really try to look at helping the communities’ livelihoods. And that might be, well, if you take better care of your livestock and know how to, through good livestock management, maybe the right vaccine, the right dewormers, trimming of the hooves, things like this your livestock is gonna live and not die. And if it’s not sick, it’s not gonna be at the end of your herd. And then a predator’s not gonna catch it.

Paul Ward (20:22):

Right. Right.

Dr. Laurie Marker (20:22):

So, all of those things are things that many of the farmers did never think about. And then we’ve also taught, them how to do things like make goat milk cheese.

Paul Ward (20:33):

And that’s part of the farm at the Conservation Wildlife Center?

Dr. Laurie Marker (20:34):

Yes. Yes.

Dr. Laurie Marker (20:39):

And we have farmers come into us to learn these kinds of skills. And with that then they can put a little dairy together out in their communities and make their own cheese. You can do this even without refrigeration. And again, where we’re living, we are in very rural areas. We’re off the grid where our center is. We make all of our own electricity. We’re sustainable. We’ve got solar panels everywhere. We’ve got a major biomass program, we’re looking at biomass, electricity. So it’s been a very, very interesting process to try to develop something in the middle of nowhere.

Paul Ward (21:18):

Right.

Dr. Laurie Marker (21:19):

And do it

Paul Ward (21:20):

Successfully.

Dr. Laurie Marker (21:21):

Successfully. And then share that with other people to realize that we’ve got a lot of sun in an arid landscape that we can do different things, but also to try to help people not to again, live in, in such a poor way. So we’ve got women’s training programs. We’ve been able to put, you know, women to making crafts and other items that can be sold. We’ve tried to make a global market for these materials and equipment. We’ve developed a habitat restoration project where, interestingly enough, that if you over graze an arid landscape, sometimes other things grow that you don’t want.

Paul Ward (22:02):

Weeds.

Dr. Laurie Marker (22:03):

Weeds. In Africa we get thick in the thorn bushes that grow. And if a cheetah is running 70 miles an hour through these thorn bushes, it can scratch their eyes. If it scratches their eyes and may become blind, then they’re gonna maybe catch livestock, which is what a problem animal is.

Dr. Laurie Marker (22:21):

And most of the animals that we’ve worked on for cheetahs are not problem animals. They’re healthy, but if they have an illness or a sickness or are blinded, they then become a problem animal. Then they put the bad name on all the other predators. So, those are some of the things that we’ve been able to, I’m gonna say fare it out by working with the farming community and all so many animals. If an animal gets caught, the farmers call us, we will anesthetize it, take blood tissues, do a full screening of the animal, and then we’ll most of the time be able to call her and then put it back out into the wild. And that helps the farmers know how that she is living on their land. And we can share more information with the farmers along that line.

Paul Ward (23:07):

Interesting. And I also read that you have students come from all over the world to volunteer or intern zoologists come. So, it’s kind of grown into this learning center.

Dr. Laurie Marker (23:20):

It’s a huge, yeah. We’ve got a very big research and education center in Namibia, and we welcome interns from all walks of life. But many of the universities from, of course, California universities. We get a lot of students from UC Davis.

Paul Ward (23:35):

My alma mater.

Dr. Laurie Marker (23:37):

Great. We like it. Oh, great. Good for you. And from we’ve got great relationships in places like Oregon and throughout. I’m traveling now throughout the country doing lectures at many of the universities that we work with. And so, we love to get students. We get great students from Namibia and other areas of Africa as well, because we’re also trying to train the best scientists for Africa. So that they could take over all the work and, you know, it’s their country.

Paul Ward (24:06):

Right.

Dr. Laurie Marker (24:07):

Continent. And what we want is to be able to help provide the opportunities to have the best African scientists there are, and I’m very proud after all these years that my students and interns are, I’m gonna say in many ways, running much of Namibia.

Paul Ward (24:26):

Interesting.

Dr. Laurie Marker (24:27):

They’re running the wildlife departments, the agriculture departments, the education departments,

Paul Ward (24:31):

But they started at the Cheetah Conservation Fund

Dr. Laurie Marker (24:34):

As an intern.

Paul Ward (24:35):

Wow. Interesting.

Dr. Laurie Marker (24:35):

And they’re now running our organization, so, so it’s quite nice. We also have a very, very big ecotourism component, so. Because we do have a very large wildlife reserve with all aspects of wildlife from cheetahs and leopards and hyenas, but kudus and oribs and.

Paul Ward (24:54):

Oh wow.

Dr. Laurie Marker (24:54):

Giraffe. I mean, every..

Paul Ward (24:56):

It’s all there in the reserve.

Dr. Laurie Marker (24:57):

It’s all there. And with that, we do have an ecotourism lodge, a small lodge, and we welcome people, guests to come and visit. We’re open to the public every day. We have visitors who come and see the work that we’re doing, learn about our livestock guarding dogs and all the aspects of research that is ongoing.

Paul Ward (25:19):

Speaking of that, is there a website or a Facebook page that folks could learn more?

Dr. Laurie Marker (25:24):

Absolutely. Please go to our website. It’s cheetah.org. It’s a great website, obvious easy name for what we do. Our Facebook is @ccfcheetah or #SavetheCheetah.

Paul Ward (25:40):

So, for folks that believe in the cause and want to help more, you are a 501c3, how can they get more involved?

Dr. Laurie Marker (25:47):

Well, we’d love people to get more involved with us. Most of our funding does come from the United States private funds, basically from people who care about what we’re doing. There’s many ways to get involved. So go to our website, cheetah.org. But also, there you can find out about how you can sponsor one of our orphan cheetahs, which we’ve are now taking care of about 130 cheetahs.

Paul Ward (26:11):

Wow. How much does that cost per year to take care of a cheetah?

Dr. Laurie Marker (26:14):

It’s close to $6,000 to $8,000 per cheetah.

Paul Ward (26:18):

Wow.

Dr. Laurie Marker (26:18):

So that adds up really quickly.

Paul Ward (26:20):

And you have a hundred cheetahs right now?

Dr. Laurie Marker (26:21):

130.

Paul Ward (26:23):

Wow.

Dr. Laurie Marker (26:23):

Yeah. I know that is hard and, but we, but you can sponsor part of a cheetah. You can give a cheetah as somebody’s gift for their birthday, or Mother’s Day, or Father’s Day or Christmas or whatever. So do go to our website and learn about the cheetah sponsorship, because that’s really helpful. Then you get a story about the cheetah and a picture on the cheetah. You can select which cheetah you wanna sponsor. But you can also help sponsor a livestock guarding dog. And that’s a little bit more generic, but oftentimes we even have ways that you can name a dog or name a cheetah. We have chapters throughout the country. And these chapters, again, try to help bring awareness together and raise funds to help us with the work that we’re doing. And in Namibia and our whole staff, we’ve got about 200 staff members.

Paul Ward (27:13):

Oh, wow.

Dr. Laurie Marker (27:14):

Pretty large.

Paul Ward (27:15):

It’s big.

Dr. Laurie Marker (27:15):

And with that, trying to help save the last cheetahs in the world, that’s a really critical thing. So, we hope people will learn more about what we are doing. You can do a monthly donation, even a $5 all adds up and it all helps. So, thank you.

Paul Ward (27:30):

Absolutely.

Dr. Laurie Marker (27:31):

Ah, our motto is, “Save the Cheetah, Change the World.”

Paul Ward (27:33):

Well, speaking of that, if you don’t mind, I got a quote that is from you. “We always think there is someone else who will do something, that, ‘They,’ will take care of it. I realized early in my work that there is no, ‘They.’ And so I decided that I would take action to save the cheetah from extinction.” I love that. I love that quote.

Dr. Laurie Marker (27:54):

Yeah. Thank you. Yes. Well, I hope others will join and I hope you’ll come and visit.

Paul Ward (27:59):

I would, I would love to. Well, Dr. Laurie Marker, I wanna thank you for being our guest on this edition of On the Road. We loved having you, and we will help spread the word.

Dr. Laurie Marker (28:07):

Thank you very much.

Paul Ward (28:09):

Absolutely. And we want to thank our sponsor, Opus Escrow. And be sure to tune in next time for On the Road.