Presentation by Carolina Torres (Ecology coordinator at Cheetah Conservation Fund).
‘After finishing my MSc in 2017, I have been working with the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) in Namibia since May 2018. My job and experiences here have been multi-faceted: from doing ecological monitoring of wildlife in our area, to working with farmers on mitigation solutions for the conflicts they are experiencing with carnivores, to picking up orphaned cheetahs that have lost their mother in the wild, to seeing some cheetahs be released back into the wild… All of these experiences have given me a lot of insights into human-wildlife conflict – which I think in reality is more of a people conflict over wildlife… as is usually our own needs and livelihoods (e.g. livestock) that will make us come into conflict with wildlife.
The work I have been part of here at CCF is absolutely necessary to help cheetahs persist in the wild, and provide a home to those that unfortunately are orphaned too young and won’t get to go back into the wild. However, there is still an underlying problem: that we as humans are no longer dependent on the nature that we live with, and we usually remove nature/wildlife for our own use… and THAT has to change. I am setting myself to start my own non-profit organisation here in Namibia to tackle this!
*Note: Views expressed are solely my own, and not necessarily represent CCF as an organisation.'