Word: cheetahs
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Thousands of years ago, nothing could stop the cheetah. The sleek, spotted cat ranged throughout Africa--from the Cape to Cairo--and into Southern Asia. Egyptian pharaohs paraded them as pets and relied on their speed--they can reach 60 m.p.h. (96 km/h)--in royal hunts...
...recent times, however, the cheetah has not been able to outrun its own vulnerability. Its lifestyle requires large expanses of land where prey is abundant. As farmers and ranchers began to transform the African landscape, the cheetah population, which reproduces slowly under the best of conditions, began to suffer. Forever on the move in search of food, the cat became a frequent target of trophy hunters and farmers who didn't want cheetahs killing their cattle. A quarter-century ago, about 30,000 cheetahs roamed in 44 African countries. Today the figure is fewer than 15,000 in 26 countries...
...largest remaining cheetah population--about 3,000--inhabits the harshly beautiful savannah of Namibia in southwest Africa. That's where conservation biologist Laurie Marker, founder of the Cheetah Conservation Fund, hopes to ensure the great cat's survival. She sees it as a test case of whether human development and wildlife habitats can coexist. "If we can save the cheetah here," says Marker, "we are talking about saving an entire ecosystem. We can save the world...
Marker, 45, first encountered cheetahs 25 years ago; they were in captivity at the Oregon wildlife park where she worked. Over the years she developed a successful cheetah breeding program. In the 1980s Marker made several trips to Namibia, where she began to use a cheetah she had raised in Oregon, named Khayam, to study the possibility of returning the cats to the wild. Although the animal hunted and killed by instinct, without the 18 to 22 months of training that a young cheetah gets from its mother, Khayam couldn't learn how to survive...
What can be done with Cheetah? Replace that nattering chimp with gorillas who are all too human. This is a film about parenting, about the pain and triumph of racial or social assimilation. Kala is a loving adoptive mother, her concern for the boy complicated by the loss of her own child and the knowledge that his difference, when he finally does understand it, may force him from her. To Kerchak, Tarzan is a threat: a wiser form of machismo. And to the brash young Terk (Rosie O'Donnell), Tarzan is just another playmate--weird...