Experts warns that cheetah going into extinction with just 7,100 left in the wild

Experts have warned that urgent action is needed to be taken to stop the world's fastest land animal, the cheetah - sprinting to extinction.

According to researchers, an estimated 7100 of cheetahs remain in the wild, which occupy just nine per cent of the territory they once lived in.

According to a new investigation led by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), Asiatic populations have been hit the hardest with fewer than 50 individuals surviving in Iran.

And in Zimbabwe, the fleet-footed cats numbers have dropped from 1,200 to about 170 in just 16 years, representing an astonishing 85 per cent..

The dramatic decline has now prompted calls for the animal's status to be upgraded from "vulnerable" to "endangered" on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of threatened species.

Project leader for the Rangewide Conservation Program for Cheetah and African Wild Dog, Dr Sarah Durant, from ZSL and WCS, said;

"This study represents the most comprehensive analysis of cheetah status to date.

"Given the secretive nature of this elusive cat, it has been difficult to gather hard information on the species, leading to its plight being overlooked. Our findings show that the large space requirements for cheetah, coupled with the complex range of threats faced by the species in the wild, mean that it is likely to be much more vulnerable to extinction than was previously thought."

The cheetah is one of the world's most wide-ranging carnivores and needs a lot of space and partly because of this, 77 per cent of its remaining habitat falls outside protected areas, leaving the animal vulnerable, especially to human activities.

According to researchers, the cats have suffered as a result of humans hunting their prey, habitat loss, illegal trafficking of cheetah parts, and the exotic pet trade, even within well-managed parks and reserves.

Dr Kim Young-Overton, from the wild cat conservation organisation Panthera, said:

"We've just hit the reset button in our understanding of how close cheetahs are to extinction.

"The take-away from this pinnacle study is that securing protected areas alone is not enough. We must think bigger, conserving across the mosaic of protected and unprotected landscapes that these far-reaching cats inhabit if we are to avert the otherwise certain loss of the cheetah forever."

The study was published in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

John von Radowitz - Press Association