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For 35 years, American Zoologist Laurie Marker is collecting and storing samples in a cheetah sperm bank namibiaHopefully conservationists will never have to use them.
But they worry that the world’s fastest land animal may one day face extinction and artificial breeding will be required to save it.
Marker says he founded the sperm bank at the Cheetah Conservation Fund in the south African The nation has a “frozen zoo” of leopards that it has been building since 1990. It would be used in the worst-case scenario for big cats, whose numbers have fallen worryingly in the wild over the past 50 years.
“You don’t do anything with it unless it’s needed,” Marker, one of the leading experts on cheetahs, told The Associated Press from his research center near the Namibian city of Otjiwarongo. “And we never want to get to that point.”
Conservationists celebrated World Cheetah Day on Thursday and fewer than 7,000 of them remain in the wild, a number similar to the critically endangered black rhinoceros. There are only about 33 populations of cheetahs scattered primarily across Africa, with most populations containing fewer than 100 animals, Marker said.
Like many species, smooth cats, which can run at speeds of up to 70 miles per hour (112 kilometers per hour), are endangered by habitat loss, human-wildlife conflict, and the illegal animal trade. Their shrinking, isolated groups mean that their gene pool is also shrinking as smaller populations are constantly interbreeding, impacting their reproduction rates.
Globally, cheetah numbers have declined by 80% in the wild over the past half century and have been driven out of 90% of their historical range.
Scientist Cheetahs are believed to have already narrowly escaped extinction at the end of the last Ice Age, about 10,000–12,000 years ago, which was the first to reduce their gene pool.
Marker said the lack of genetic diversity, along with the fact that cheetahs have 70-80% abnormal sperm, means they may need help in the future.
“And so, what exactly is a sperm bank, right?” Marker said.
A common conservation strategy
Sperm storage is not unique to cheetahs in the wildlife world. This is a strategy that conservationists have developed for other species including elephants, rhinos, antelope, other big cats, birds, and others.
The importance of animal breeding research is seen in the desperate fight to save the northern white rhinoceros from extinction, Marker said.
There are only two northern white rhinoceros left, both females, making the species functionally extinct with no chance of reproducing naturally. Their only hope lies in artificial reproduction using northern white rhinoceros sperm that was collected and frozen years ago.
Because both of the remaining northern white rhinos – mother and daughter – cannot conceive, scientists have attempted to implant a northern white rhinoceros embryo into a southern white rhinoceros surrogate. The surrogates have not managed to carry any pregnancies to term, but the conservation team has committed to continuing trying to save the northern white rhinoceros against all odds.
Other efforts around artificial breeding have been successful, including a project in which black-footed ferrets were bred using artificial breeding after they had been reduced to a single wild population in Wyoming in the United States.
last resort
Marker does not chase cheetahs to collect sperm but takes samples opportunistically. In Namibia, cheetahs are mostly threatened by farmers who see them as a threat to their livestock, meaning that teams of markers are called out to cats that have been injured or captured and will collect samples while treating and releasing them.
Sperm samples can also be taken from dead leopards. “Each cheetah is really a unique mix of a very small number of genes. We’ll try to bank every animal we possibly can,” Marker said.
Samples and counts of about 400 cheetahs are now stored at ultralow temperatures in liquid nitrogen in the Cheetah Conservation Fund laboratory. Marker’s research does not involve any artificial insemination as breeding wild animals in captivity is not allowed in Namibia.
If cheetahs were again threatened with extinction, the first backup would be the approximately 1,800 cats living in zoos and other captive environments. But, Marker said, cheetahs do not reproduce well in captivity and sperm banks, like those with northern white rhinos, may be a last resort.
Without it, “we wouldn’t stand much of a chance,” Marker said.
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AP Africa News: https://apnews.com/hub/africa