The Establishment and Evolution of the AfriCat Foundation
The AfriCat Foundation Trust was officially registered as a non-profit organization on the 25th August 1993. Its objective, as stated in the Deed of Trust, was “the preservation of all African cats.” The name chosen for the Foundation epitomized that intention – for all African cats to be able to live un-persecuted, wild, and free – A FREE CAT.
The wish to conserve and protect, in particular cats, was born out of the family’s personal experiences of trapping and hunting leopards and cheetahs in an attempt to reduce livestock losses due to cattle predation by these animals, only to learn that this was not effective.
The family wished to raise funds to enable them to work with farmers to pass on their own lessons learnt to mitigate human-wildlife conflict and reduce the killing of predators by farmers, and to meet some of the costs of rescuing unwanted predators from farmland and releasing them elsewhere or caring for those that could not be released.
Since its inception, AfriCat has implemented a number of strategies, with varying degrees of success, that aimed to address the predominant predator conservation issues of the time, within the available resources of the Foundation. More details of past projects can be found in the section on Our Projects; here we provide an overview.
Human-Wildlife Conflict Outreach with Farmers and Rescue & Release Programme (1989 – 2010)
Before AfriCat was even established, the Hanssens, in particular the only son Wayne and his then wife Lise, were driving across the country to meet with farmers and discuss ways for farmers to co-exist with predators without losing too many livestock. They shared the lessons learnt by Okonjima; (i) removing predators was not beneficial as it merely opened up territory for new leopards to come in, often more than one and often younger, less experienced males that had a higher likelihood of killing livestock and (ii) losses of calves could be significantly reduced by kraaling and, when older, feeding them, in predator proof kraals while their mother went out to graze until about four months.
From four months they could go out with their mothers who would protect them from predators but additional security could be provided in the form of herdsmen and/or mules or donkeys. Using methods such as these the Hanssens had been able to reduce stock losses from 20-30 per year down to three or fewer. Moreover, while these measures had some costs, the costs were far lower than the cost of livestock losses the measures were preventing.
However, despite talking to hundreds of farmers from their own personal experience, Wayne and Lise did not see significant change; most farmers remained unconvinced or unable (due to financial or logistical constraints) to change generations of traditional farming methods.
The contact with the farmers had an unexpected ‘knock-on effect’. Having understood that Wayne and Lise were concerned with the welfare of leopards and cheetahs on farmlands, in particular those that farmers caught and wanted to remove; the farmers frequently asked that the unwanted predator be taken away as the solution to their problem.
In order to avoid the predator being killed and to maintain communication with the farmer, Wayne and Lise, and thereafter AfriCat, rescued and released many cheetahs and leopards from farms where they were considered problem animals. In the initial years it was relatively easy to find farms willing to have them, although they were sometimes far away. Over time however it became harder to find suitable release sites, even in neighboring countries and the government was growing increasingly uncomfortable with NGOs rescuing and releasing predators around the country.
AfriCat’s data also showed that 42% of the animals rescued had been previously caught, sometimes on the same farm where they were first caught. While this data confirmed that the animals had benefitted from the ‘second chance’, it also showed that some animals were returning to their original place of capture. Meanwhile, data was emerging from research on cheetah spatial ecology by the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) that confirmed that cheetahs were highly likely to try to return to their traditional home range if relocated.
The same research also demonstrated that cheetahs have “communication hubs” and that if livestock was kept away from these hubs, predation by cheetahs would be substantially reduced. All these factors led to a decision by AfriCat to cease the rescue and release programme in 2010. In total AfriCat rescued 1,042 cheetahs and leopards between 1993 and 2010.
The AfriCat Carnivore Care Centre (est 1993 – closing 2025)
Although 84% of rescued predators were released immediately or within weeks of the rescue, a significant number could not be released. Some had to be euthanized due to injury or poor health but many others came into the care of AfriCat; they were unsuitable for release because they had already been in captivity for an extended period, were injured or were too old or too young to survive in the wild.
AfriCat committed to caring for these animals until their death, leading to the establishment of the AfriCat Carnivore Care Centre. At its peak there were more than a hundred predators, mainly cheetahs, in AfriCat’s care. Okonjima guests were able to see these captive animals and Okonjima and AfriCat took the opportunity of the guest visits to raise awareness about the plight of predators on farmland in Namibia.
The cost of caring for such a large number of carnivores in captivity was immense however and in this period most of AfriCat’s time and resources was spent feeding, caring for and treating the animals and raising funds to do so. With the ending of the rescue and release programme in 2010, no further cats came into AfriCat’s care and the AfriCat Carnivore Care Centre officially closes at the end of 2025.
Clinical Cheetah Research (2003–2016)
AfriCat’s care of the animals in the ACCC includes an annual health check. In addition, from 2000, a number of formerly captive cheetahs were released into the Okonjima Nature Reserve; these wild, free -roaming cheetahs were also included in the annual health checks. Recognizing the opportunity this provided – long-term and repeated access to a large, stable population of captive and wild cheetahs – a number of Namibian and South African vets and their students started a wide variety of research projects that has yielded the publication of many peer-reviewed scientific articles and book chapters and the completion of multiple masters and PhD -level degrees.
Even more importantly the research has benefited the conservation of both wild and captive cheetahs around the world by increasing our understanding of multiple aspects of cheetah health including metabolism of captive and wild cheetahs; health and chronic diseases of captive cheetahs; and dental, oral and ocular pathology.
The research also improved assessment methods for stress and blood pressure, established reference intervals for serum biochemistry, and established best practices for immobilization and anesthesia, reproductive management and surgical sterilization and external parasite control.
Cheetah Rehabilitation from Captivity to the Okonjima Nature Reserve (2000–2018)
As the number of cheetahs in the care of the ACCC continued to swell, Okonjima and AfriCat developed a plan to rehabilitate all those suitable into the Okonjima Nature Reserve in order to give them a second chance at living wild. Those deemed suitable for release were usually cheetahs that were injured or too young for release when they were initially rescued but which, over time, became suitable for release.
The project was considered ‘rehabilitation’ because it was not known at the time if cheetahs reared in captivity would know how to hunt; although no cheetahs were born in the ACCC many were rescued with their mothers and had been in captivity from a very young age.
Between 2000 and 2018, 50 cheetahs were rehabilitated into the Okonjima Nature Reserve. They were fitted with VHF collars to enable post-release monitoring every 2-5 days and were supplement fed if needed (i.e. if they were not hunting). Almost all of the released cheetahs learnt to hunt and were able to live independently. However, the mortality rate was high and almost half died within a year of release, primarily due to predation by leopards and spotted hyenas.
A small number survived at least five years in the wild. Coalitions (cheetahs that live as a group), those that were 2-4 years old at the time of the release and those who had not been in captivity longer than 3 years were all found to have higher rates of survival. While AfriCat’s cheetah rehabilitation project could be said to be successful in the sense that the majority learnt to be self-sustaining, the high mortality rate led to the discontinuation of cheetah rehabilitation into the ONR as it became evident that it was unsuitable as a cheetah rehabilitation site due to the high density of leopard.
Environmental Education (1989–2020)
AfriCat’s environmental education programme started in 1989 with the opening of the AfriCat Environmental Education (EE) Center on Okonjima, sponsored by the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA). The objective was to raise the awareness of future generations about their environment, and to enable them to acquire knowledge, skills, values, and determination to act, both individually and collectively, to address present and future environmental challenges. The programme ran until its closure in 2020 as a result of the Covid pandemic.
During its years of operation, learners from primary and secondary schools throughout Namibia and abroad, had the opportunity to stay for periods of 2-5 nights and learn about Namibia’s flora and fauna and conservation issues. With funding from international donors, such as the TUSK Trust, and payments for visits by schools abroad, AfriCat was able to hire EE teachers and coordinators and to host school groups from Namibia that would have been otherwise unable to attend.
Today, although the school EE programme is no longer running, AfriCat and Okonjima continue to raise awareness of environmental issues amongst Okonjima’s guests and occasionally host tertiary education groups such as conservation and veterinary students from Namibia and beyond.