Mission Statement

‘Striving towards the long term survival of predators and vultures which are of conservation concern outside protected areas in South Africa.’

To achieve its mission the De Wildt Cheetah and Wildlife Trust has an extensive community outreach and education programme and a strategic breeding plan. The Trust conducts research on wildlife disease and nutrition and in South Africa it has implemented a national plan for the conservation of free roaming cheetah.

• To breed rare and endangered species.
• To support scientific investigations into all aspects of these species.
• To promote public awareness - particularly amongst the younger generation - of the pressing need for wildlife preservation: to afford visitors to the Centre of the opportunity of viewing endangered species in natural surroundings and at close quarters.
• To continue to play a role in conservation biology by helping to maintain adequate gene pools or rare and endangered species.
• To generate income to support existing and future breeding projects at the Centre.
• Where feasible, to re-establish endangered wildlife species into areas where they once occurred naturally.

Governance

The Trust consisting of ten trustees, deals with the financial governance, strategic planning and policy decisions.

A Management Committee deals with the day to day management issues, including the veterinary care of animals.

Trustees

Management Comittee

Professor Henk Bertschinger, Dr Emily Lane, Dr Peter Caldwell, Dr Kobus du Toit, Dr Sarah Miller, Dr Gerhard Steenkamp, Ann van Dyk, Alan Strachan, André Neuhoff, Vanessa Bezuidenhout, Dr Remo Lobetti.

Staff

History

The De Wildt Cheetah Centre was established in 1971 with the aim of breeding endangered species. Since that time the Centre’s efforts have resulted in the major achievement of breeding what was once a threatened species, the cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus). Over the years over 750 cheetah cubs have been born at De Wildt – a dramatic contrast to the days when the cheetah population of South Africa was estimated at a mere 700.

While the cheetah project was the base from which the Centre launched its conservation ethic, it soon widened to include other rare and endangered animals such as the wild dog, brown hyaena, serval, suni antelope, blue and red duiker, bontebok, riverine rabbit and vultures - including the very rare Egyptian vulture. Many of these have been successfully bred for later reintroduction into the wild, thus helping to repopulate areas where such species have disappeared or are no longer abundant.

The Early Years

As is true of most such enterprises, De Wildt is ultimately the product of the commitment of one person. In the late 1940’s Godfrey and Catherine van Dyk, both general practitioners in Pretoria and nearing retirement age, decided to buy a country property as a week-end getaway. In 1950 they found what they were looking for only 40km from Pretoria: a property of some 65 hectares (156 acres), of which a third was orchards and two-thirds was rocky hillside covered in natural vegetation and still supporting a reasonable representation of the local fauna. Its name: De Wildt Estates.

Of the five Van Dyk children, the teenage Ann (the second youngest) welcomed the farm venture with the greatest enthusiasm, and immediately envisaged herself as a daughter of the soil producing barrow loads of flowers, fruits and vegetables. Before long Godfrey and Catherine decided to move to the farm permanently, along with Ann and her younger brother Reginald. A short time later, Ann’s eldest brother, Godfrey junior, decided to give up his medical studies and also take part in the farming life. Under the Van Dyk stewardship the farm gradually became a viable enterprise, and after the death of their parents, Ann and Godfrey added an intensive egg producing operation which eventually housed 100,000 laying eggs.

Ann had always had immense compassion for stray or injured animals, and as her concern became known in the neighbourhood De Wildt began to accumulate a menagerie: domestic species such as horses and mules, of course, but also a hyrax, a dingo and a puma. Then in October 1968 came a call from a farmer who knew of two cheetah cubs needing a home – were the Van Dyk’s interested? Were they! Aware that they needed a permit to hold native wildlife, they decided nevertheless to secure the cheetahs as quickly as they could, and worry about the paperwork afterwards. One room of the house became the cheetah’s home base but they were given free range of the house and garden, and quickly seemed to take it all in their stride. A phone call to enquire about permits, however, resulted instead in a prompt visit from Transvaal Nature Conservation officers, who advised them that by acquiring the animals they had breeched the law, confiscated the cubs and delivered then to the National Zoological Gardens in Pretoria.

The Zoo meantime, had been in the course of developing a greater emphasis on captive breeding, and had begun to achieve some notable successes with such species as white rhino and scimitar oryx. They soon reached the point of recognizing that their scope was limited by the metropolitan site that they occupied, and were thinking about the possibility of opening up a new location or locations which would concentrate on the conservation and breeding of endangered species, including the cheetah.

Godfrey made an appointment to talk to the director of the Zoo, along the lines of: you’ve got cheetahs and you need land to breed them on; we’ve got land to breed them on but we’ve got no cheetahs. Within a couple of weeks Frank Brand, the then Zoo director, and Hannes Koen, chairman of the Zoo’s board of trustees, visited De Wildt and were conducted on a tour by Ann and Godfrey… Ann could hardly believe that her most cherished dream seemed to be coming true. And indeed it did.

On April 16, 1971, the De Wildt Cheetah Breeding Centre, in the Magaliesberg foothills west of Pretoria, officially opened for business with nine cheetahs.

De Wildt Matures

Today the Centre can look back with satisfaction on a job well done in ensuring the survival of Acinonyx jubatus, successfully breeding the king cheetah in captivity for the first time in the world. While the cheetah project was the base from which Ann launched here conservation ethic, it soon widened to include other endangered animal species, such as brown hyaena, wild dogs, servals, suni antelope, and riverine rabbits.

But the success had also been tempered with sadness and losses over the years. Soon after the centre opened, wrote Ann in her book, ‘The Cheetahs of De Wildt’: “I realized how fortunate I was, but wondered if I would ever really get to know them. Would our cheetah breeding aims and ambitions be fulfilled? Would we be able to discover why they had never bred successfully in capitivity?”

These, and a myriad of other questions, were to be answered by dint of hard work, long hours, help and friendship from what Ann found were many other kinred spirits in the conservation world. Among these were people such as Professor John Skinner, then head of Tuks department of zoology and director of the University of Pretoria’s Mammal Research Institute; Frank Brand and Hannes Koen; Professor Brough Coubrough, David Meltzer and Henk Bertschinger of Onderstepoort; Doctor Howard Pettifer, a then Trasnvaal Department of Nature Conservation field officer and researcher; and zoo director Willie Labuschgne.

After a number of stillborn births, the initial breakthrough came in March 1975, when the first live cubs were born at De Wildt. A search of the enclosure the next day revealed what were initially thought to be dead newborn cubs, but on closer inspection they were found to be barely alive and were rushed off the mountain enclosure to Ann’s house. Here a cheetah nursery was set up and Ann gained her first experience of raising weak cubs. This was to be repeated many times over the years with ailing, orphaned and deserted cubs.

Then came a cat flu epidemic which again threatened to put a stop to the breeding programme but quarantine, professional veterinary assistance and a then-new “live” vaccine brought matters back to normal. Ann’s brother Godfrey died in September 1976 and she decided to continue with the cheetah project and also to expand it. At this stage De Wildt was closely allied to the National Zoological Gardens in Pretoria and Zoo trustees were fully supportive of her efforts.

This led to the wild dog breeding project in 1978, which has also been successful. Breeding started in 1978 with a group of 6 wild dogs which came from Namibia. The De Wildt Cheetah and Wildlife Centre has bred over 500 of these highly social animals. De Wildt has participated in numerous successful releases but despite this, free roaming wild dog still faces the threat of extinction.

In 1977, vultures had found a feeding site purposely build at De Wildt. Its initial location was unsuitable for these wild raptors but moving it to a more open stretch of land solved the problem.

In 1981 there was another momentous breakthrough at De Wildt when the first ever king cheetah to be bred in captivity was born. The thinking, in years gone by, was that the kind was a sub-species of Acinonyx jubatus and it was named Acinonyx rex by a Major A.L. Cooper who came across it in what was Rhodesia in 1926. The birth of a captive king at De Wildt proved it was an abnormally marked variant of Acinonyx jubatus. Since then a number of other king cheetahs have been bred at De Wildt and some of the king cheetahs have been exported to zoos worldwide.

In 1985, again in conjunction with the National Zoological Gardens, De Wildt started a riverine rabbit breeding programme. This has been successful to the extent that a number of these endangered mammals were relocated to their natural Karoo habitat.

September 1986 saw extensive damage caused to the operation by a hail and thunderstorm which had De Wildt’s hospital clogged with injured and frozen animals and birds. After the storm passed, a number of dead cheetah and other animal carcasses were found. But there was a brighter side. Six male cheetahs had escaped from the hail damaged enclosure, found their way into a large impala camp and killed a ewe. This proved, once again, that captive-bred cheetahs do not lose the hunting instinct.

By now the De Wildt name had become synonymous with cheetahs; Ann received the coveted gold medal award of the South African Nature Foundation for her valuable contribution toward the captive breeding of cheetah; and many people wanted to visit the Centre and see the animals and birds.

A decision was made to allow groups to take guided-tours which, in addition to providing an environmental education opportunity, would be a source of funding. One such tour, in the summer of 1990, saw a veld fire caused by a careless dropping of either a match or a lighted cigarette. “For five hours two fire engines, friends, zoo staff, neighbours and my own team fought a losing battle as 6 meter (18 foot) flames devoured everything.” All enclosure gates were opened to free frightened animals. Some animal could not be accounted for and others were already badly burnt. “The next morning we took stock. A silent black path of land was all that was left of the cheetah camps. We lost one breeding cheetah and four vultures that sad day. Fourteen animals, including cheetah cubs, were treated for burns,” Ann wrote. Appeals via the press and television stations led to donations of cash and goods and Ann’s indomitable spirit soon had de Wildt back up and running.

De Wildt Today

In January 1997, De Wildt teamed up with the Vulture Study Group of the Endangered Wildlife Trust, whereby injured or poisoned vultures are brought to the Centre to be incorporated into captive breeding populations. Vultures at the Centre include Cape griffon, Lappet-faced, White-backed and the very rare to South Africa Egyptian vulture.

What else happened in these 10 years!

During 2000, as a reaction to the declining numbers of cheetah in the wild, De Wildt spearheaded the formation of the National Cheetah Management Forum which developed a national strategy for the protection of free-roaming cheetah. One action to come from the group, was the realization of the need for a national census of free-roaming cheetah. This census was begun in 2003 and will continue for three years.

The country of South Africa has awakened to the success of De Wildt Cheetah and Wildlife Centre. In 2002, its’ founder and director, Ann van Dyk, received the gold medal from the Wildlife and Environment Society; and that was followed, in 2003, by Ann being awarded the Chancellors Award from the University of Pretoria.