New chapter for cheetahs as SA cats relocate to Mozambique

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. By Ed Stoddard

- By Ed Stoddard

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.

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.

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.