A male northwest African cheetah sprays urine on a tree to mark its territory during a 2008 camera survey whose results were released February 23, 2009.
Scientists hope to stave off extinction for the 250-strong subspecies. But first they need hard data--and these photos are surprising first steps, survey co-leader Sarah Durant said.
"We weren't sure we'd get any photos at all," she said. "To get so many remarkable pictures was just amazing."
Shown prowling the Sahara in 2008, this cat is the only northwest African cheetah captured in daylight during the first camera-trap survey of the subspecies in Algeria, scientists announced February 23, 2009.
Typically daytime animals, the cheetahs were likely laid low by 100-plus-degree-Fahrenheit (38-plus-degree-Celsius) temperatures, survey co-leader Sarah Durant said.
The heat and roadless terrain also took its toll on the researchers, who installed 40 camera traps in a 1,080-square-mile (2,800-square-kilometer) region.
The result: 16 sightings of four different northwestern African cheetahs.
Its eyes reflecting a flash, an extremely rare male northwest African cheetah triggers one of the first ever Algerian camera-trap pictures of this Saharan subspecies in late summer 2008.
Released February 23, the pictures represent a first step toward protecting the elusive cheetahs, which are thought to number only about 250 and are listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Though diminishing habitat and prey are suspected culprits, no one really knows why the subspecies is in such dire straits--which is why the camera survey is so important, said research fellow Sarah Durant of the Zoological Society of London, who co-led the project, to National Geographic News.
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