The cheetah originally occupied most of Africa exept for the equatorial forest and the true desert ( Sahara) , as whell as much of the Middle East and India, where it become extinct in the early 1950's. It is now extremelyrare in the rest of Asia and Africa north of the equator. It is estimated that there are less than 7500 cheetah left in the world, and about 6000 of these are  found in Southern Africa. According to a 1970 study the numbers of cheetah in Namibia had improved, due apparently to the removal of lions and hyenas by farmers, and in some cases the re-introduction of antelope species favored by these fleet-footed cats. More recent surveys have shown that Namibia has 2000-2500 cheetah, of which 95% are on private (game or cattle) farms. Unfortunately, some farmers have continued to shoot cheetah because of their tendency to raid stock, particularly where their natural prey species are scarce, or absent. Whilst the current figures do not make the cheetahs endangered in the absolute sense of the word, the extraordinary degree of genetic uniformity that these cats have been shown to exhibit raises the possibility that a disease could devastate wild populations.
Tollie and Roeleen Nel of Otjitotongwe Cheetah Park, near Kamanjab in north-western Namibia, live on a farm which has been owned by the Nel family since 1931. in 1994 they had a experience whichs was to change the course of their lives. Within 4 weeks wild cheetah killed 38 of their goats and sheep, so they decided to trap the animals. One of the captured was pregnant, and gave birth to five cubs. Three of them survived, and were kept by the Nels as pets. This inspired the family to dedicate their lives work to the preservation of this species. To this end they established the Otjitotongwe Cheetah Park on their family farm.
The Park has extended an open offer to farmers to remove any problem cheetah, whether it has resorted to stock raiding or is likely to do so. For this the farmer is paid from N$ 2000-N$ 2500. If the Nels did not purchase the cheetah, some farmers would be more inclined to shoot the animals and sell their skins or sell them to trophy hunting farms. The captured cheetah are then transferred to the Cheetah Park, where they are released into an enclosure with the other wild cheetah after they been in quarantine for 8 to 12 weeks. Initially this enclosure was only one hectare, but now the Park has succeeded in expanding the enclosure to 40 hectares. In all, there are now 19 cheetah, including one cub who was born in the Park on the 9th July 1999.
Feeding the animals is fairly costly, as each cheetah requiers about 2 kg's of meet every day, about N$7-00/kg. Whilst a larger enclosure is obviously in the best interest of the cheetah, the requiered fencing is very costly at about N$25 000 per km. The ultimate aim is to fence the entire farm of 7000 hectares. From this it is quite clear that the expenses of this project are very high, and without support and donations the Otjitotongwe Cheetah Park could easily become bankrupt. Some large companies have offered some support, but the Nel's cannot afford to stop recruiting donations if the project is to succeed in it's entirety.
It's a large project and Tollie and Roeleen Nel could probably not run it on their own. The Cheetah Park is managed by their eldest son Mario with a lot of help from his teenage brothers and sister. Mario Nel feeds the cheetahs almost everyday on the meat of donkeys, or other dead livestock. During this ritual he takes the meat into the cheetah enclosure and thrown (or passes) it to the cheetah. Watching this it is quite evident that some of the cheetahs are much more placid than others when accepting their food. The trick for Mario is to insure that the less aggressive animals get fed, and the more aggressive ones do not try to remove his hand as well. Feeding time Mario drive with the tourist in the park so it is a ideal time for tourist to take photographs.