26/08/2026
🔊: Listen to mom Abi calls for her little cheeto puffs when they wonder off too far!
🐾Preparing for the Wild.
When we take our cheetah mother and her cubs out into the bush, every step has a purpose.
For us, rewilding begins long before the release gate opens.
The bush is their classroom. It gives the mother and cubs the opportunity to experience a natural environment, develop confidence away from their enclosure, investigate unfamiliar sights, sounds and scents, and strengthen the behaviours they will ultimately need to survive independently.
Our rewilding programme is built around preparing cheetahs for the realities of life in a protected reserve—including natural hunting skills, predator awareness and avoidance, independence and the ability to cope with their environment.
Running Wild specifically follows our own multi-stage rewilding process before release, followed by post-release monitoring.
Taking a mother & her cubs together is especially meaningful because the cubs can learn through natural maternal behaviour. Rather than simply teaching them what to do, we want them to watch, explore, investigate and learn from their mother — the way young cheetahs would develop important survival behaviours in nature.
We want them to smell the bush, hear birds and other animals, walk through different terrain, investigate their surroundings & gradually become comfortable in an environment where they are no longer dependent on people.
And importantly, we are not raising pets.
Our philosophy has always been that a cheetah bred for conservation should ultimately have the opportunity to live as a cheetah—not as a human companion.
In the past Running Wild has successfully reintroduced cheetahs onto protected reserves, including orphans, captive-raised cubs, & some of those reintroduced cats have gone on to reproduce in the wild.
That is why these seemingly simple bush walks are so important.
Every outing is another small step away from captivity & one step closer to freedom.
We don't want to teach them to depend on us.
We want to prepare them so that one day, they won't need us at all.
No day visitors, just us and our voluntee
