Sep 1, 2926 |
A wildfire set by poachers threatened a cheetah den with newborn cubs in the Panyame Conservancy, in Tete province.
According to The Origins Foundation, through a press release, the flames advanced through the Panyame Conservancy, putting at risk the female known as "Evey" and her cubs, just 25 days old.
Panyame's field teams fought the fire continuously for 30 hours, day and night, until they managed to extinguish it completely, with no cheetah injured or killed.
According to The Origins Foundation, poachers set these fires deliberately to clear the way for placing snares, a practice that threatens wildlife across the region.
Field teams described the current wave of fires as "unprecedented." The same source explains that the use of GPS collars allows teams to track each cheetah individually and confirm its survival, movements and use of the territory, a tool that is particularly important in situations of major environmental disturbance such as this one.
The founder and executive director of The Origins Foundation, Robbie Kröger, commented on the situation, saying “this is what conservation looks like. Situations can change very quickly. Right now, the priority is understanding where these animals are, making sure we can continue to monitor them, and supporting the people working in the field as these fires move across the landscape”.
The reserve covers about 210,000 hectares in western Tete province and is home to the largest wildlife population in western Mozambique. The area faces constant threats such as poaching, deforestation linked to slash-and-burn agriculture, charcoal production and illegal fishing, factors that make fires of this kind particularly dangerous for species still recovering.
The Panyame Cheetah Project grew out of the largest cheetah translocation ever undertaken. Sixteen animals were transported from South Africa to Mozambique between April and May 2025, twelve of which completed a 53-hour road journey on 14 April that year, with the remaining four arriving a month later. A year on, fourteen of the 16 animals had survived, an 87 percent survival rate, and a female named Kazi gave birth to three cubs, the first to be born from this reintroduced population in what conservationists describe as the species' ancestral range in Mozambique.
The cheetah is classified as a vulnerable species, with fewer than 7,100 individuals currently surviving in the wild worldwide, according to data cited by the same publication.
Panyame, together with some areas near Limpopo National Park and, on the Mozambican side, some areas near Kruger and the Zambezi Delta, is one of the few places where a population of cheetahs exists in Mozambique.
Photo: Panyame Conservancy/The Origins Foundation
