I don’t usually share on my blog a lot about what I do at work but yesterday I had an amazing experience and I wanted to share it with my friends, family, and blog readers.
My boss and I went to a house in Lake Oswego to meet Dr. Laurie Marker. Dr. Laurie is American but has lived the last 19 years in Namibia (just above South Africa) where she manages a staff of 150 people and a land mass of 100,000 acres to keep the Cheetah population from going into extinction. We learned that 100 years ago there were 100,000 Cheetah’s and today there is around 12,000. The main reason for this is that farmers are shooting and killing Cheetah’s because Cheetah’s are eating the farmers livestock. Dr. Laurie has developed a program that trains certain types of Turkish dogs that she raises and then gives away to farmers. These dogs bond with sheep and goats and become somewhat of a mother figure to them and will fight a Cheetah to the death if a Cheetah comes close to one of the livestock. The dogs protect the farmers and then the farmers don’t kill the Cheetahs. She has had huge success with this program and was a remarkable person to meet.
Tainai was the at house for a photo op and we got to see her too. Tainai was born in captivity but her mother only had her, no other cats in the litter. When a mama Cheetah only has 1 baby, the mother abandons the baby because they don't produce enough milk for the 1 to survive. So the Wildlife Safari adopted Tainai and she has become a really beautiful Cheetah. Her handlers treated her with so much ease, respect, and care that I asked if I could pet her, but the answer was a very quick "no." She's still a wild cat and that is not allowed.
For more information on Dr. Laurie and the Cheetah Conservation Fund click here
2 comments:
That is so cool. I thinks it's amazing when people can look at a situation and find a "out of the box" idea and fix it.
This is so cool!
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