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How many cheetahs are left in the wild?
100,000 : 8%
50,000 : 21%
10,000 : 47%
1,000 : 24%
Total Votes : 1182
It's not unusual for viewers to write in and ask how many cheetahs there were in 1990, and how many there are in the wild today. This is a great indicator of a huge misperception, the misperception being that these numbers are actually known. (Based on hunting quotas and the recent drive to weaken protection for the cheetah under the endangered species act, you would indeed be lead to believe that these numbers are known.) Cheetah population estimates are quoted as being anywhere from 9000 to 14000 in the early 1990s. These estimates have been made based on a lot of hard work and the best information available. The problem is that the best information available is full of uncertainties. How do you take an accurate census when the study subject migrates and where the total population covers a huge area? The short answer is that you don't. A number of studies were released in the early 1990s, which is why we have at least an educated guess on the population for that time, but there are no more recent large scale studies that can tell us what has happened to the wild cheetah population since then. The general consensus seems to be that the numbers are still dropping. For those of you who think that the 100,000 answer looks awfully familiar, this is the number that is often quoted for the wild cheetah population at the turn of the century. With everyone quoting this number and nobody explaining how it might have been derived, this number is highly suspect.