March 15, 2025

The Mara has lost another legend. Winda, a 10-year-old member of the famous Tano Bora coalition, took his final breath on the morning of Saturday, March 15, 2025. After breaking his leg, he was treated, but despite all efforts, he succumbed to his injuries six days later. At his age, the toll of pain proved too much to bear.

Winda’s story is one of resilience. As a part of Tano Bora, once the most formidable cheetah coalition in the Mara, he defied the odds for a decade, a rare feat for a male cheetah in the wild. He lived through battles, shifting alliances, and the loss of his brothers. Now, only one remains, Olonyok, the last of the five.

With Winda’s passing, an era ends. But his legacy, along with that of his coalition, will live on in the whispers of the Mara’s golden grasslands.

Run free, Winda. You were one of a kind.

#RIPWinda
#TanoBora

March 13, 2025

On March 6-7, 2025, our Project team participated in a crucial workshop in Narok, focusing on the rapid assessment and review of the SAFE System Strategy for the Mara sub-landscape. This initiative aims to evaluate the current status of human-wildlife conflict and refine strategies to promote safe coexistence between local communities and wildlife. Our Project Manager, Mpooya Saitoti, presented on key conflict dynamics, highlighting practical mitigation measures based on our field research and engagement with pastoralist communities.
Continuing our efforts, on March 11-12, 2025, we took part in the Cheetah and Wild Dog Stakeholder Consultative Workshop Program in Machakos, organized by KWS and ZSL. This forum gathered KWS officials, WRTI, ACK, ZSL, and other conservation organizations working across Kenya. Our Project Director and Founder, Dr. Elena Chelysheva, delivered an in-depth presentation on the ecological and behavioral adaptations, population trends, and conservation challenges of cheetahs in the Maasai Mara landscape. Using powerful imagery from our research, the presentation provided valuable insights that will inform the National Strategy for the Conservation and Management of Cheetahs and African Wild Dogs in Kenya (2025-2034) – the Logical Framework.

The result of the fruitful work of the groups, consisting of researchers, stakeholders and authorities of various Kenyan organizations was the revision of the National Strategy. The updated and new paragraphs developed by our group were presented by Dr. Elena.
Our participation in these workshops underscores our commitment to evidence-based conservation and collaborative efforts in securing the future of cheetahs and other carnivores while fostering harmonious human-wildlife coexistence.

March 3, 2025

On this day, we celebrate an important event – the replenishment of the cheetah population with four young promising cheetahs. Nashipae raised 4 cubs, and today they have begun a completely independent life. And on this day, we salute the dedicated rangers of the Mara Cheetah Unit, who have done and continue the hard work of monitoring and protecting cheetahs. We are also grateful to all the guides and guests of the Mara who helped the rangers in searching for lost cheetahs, monitoring them, and who are working with us so that tomorrow the cheetahs in the Mara not only survive, but also thrive.

Females stay with their adolescent offspring as long as it is beneficial for each family member. Typically, it is the female who leaves her litter. For example, if a female becomes pregnant, she will leave her sub-adult cubs a month before giving birth. But there are exceptions – when the cubs themselves leave their mother. This happened to Nashipae in 2016, when she, her sister Neema and their brother left their mother Rani. And now the same thing has happened to Nashipae herself. On the evening of March 1, the whole family was together, but the female was resting at some distance from the cubs. Yesterday morning, Nashipae was calling her cubs, who were remain hidden in the tall grass without revealing their presence. In the evening, when the female had already walked away by 7 km, the cubs began to move and successfully hunted at 18:10 adult Thomson gazelle and ate well in the tall grass, where other predators would not easily find them.
After the injury (on December 31), Nashipae remained able to hunt, but after each chase she limps heavily for 2-3 days. For herself, she can hunt once every 3 days and then rest in a safe place until the next hunt, while four big cubs need food every day, and the mother is not capable of providing it. Moreover, the female has become a competitor for food. In this case, it is more profitable for young littermates to stick together and hunt whenever possible. Soon, the most successful hunters will begin to separate from the group to avoid food competition. It will be very interesting to watch the process of growing up of the cubs and their new steps in life, which is not easy in the wild.

From that point on, each juvenile was assigned an individual ID number in our Mara Cheetah Database, and the Mara Cheetah Unit gave each of them names in Maa. Cub male C1M (M165) received his name Tipayo in honor of Tipayo Mpoke Oloisuya, who was at the origins of the Mara Cheetah Unit and worked selflessly for the prosperity of the Mara wildlife: first with the rhinoceroses, and since the formation of the Mara Cheetah Unit – with cheetahs. Female C2F (F110) was named Nasieku, which means “Always Comes First/Sharp One”; F3F (F111) was named Nempiris (Grace), and C4F (F112) was named Naimutie (Last Born/Patience).

March 2, 2025

Cheetahs are opportunistic hunters that hunt at any time, including the hottest hours of the day and the darkest hours of the night. To hunt successfully, a cheetah needs open space in front of it to maneuver. And very often, if there are many ungulates, a cheetah can wait for hours for the optimal position of the prey, checking the distance and direction of the ungulates so that the effort of the chase pays off.
For this to happen, two conditions must be met: 1) the distance between the cheetahs and the prey must be shorter than the distance between tour vehicles and the prey, and 2) the vehicles must remain stationary when the cheetah starts moving towards the prey, while the number of vehicles is not a significant factor. We have seen cheetahs successfully hunt in the presence of over 65 vehicles on numerous occasions. With age, on the one hand, experience increases, and on the other hand, strength decreases. Neema is now 9 years and 9 months old, which makes her one of the oldest cheetahs in the Mara. Today it was gratifying to see how the vehicles gave Neema complete freedom to hunt by parking on one side of the field and remaining motionless, waiting for the hunt. The wait was rewarded – at 12:35 Neema caught an adult male Thomson’s gazelle. In the absence of kleptoparasites, a cheetah feeds on one carcass for 5-6 hours, and Neema was able to finish the entire kill by late evening.

February 23, 2025

Our long-term observations of cheetahs in the Maasai Mara ecosystem have revealed the extraordinary importance of areas with dense bushes. In such places, females can more easily raise litters because they more successfully hide from lions and hyenas, the cheetahs’ main competitors. But most importantly, in the bushland, cheetahs can successfully and regularly hunt for prey from a short distance, saving energy and time. This is important for both young animals and old ones or those who temporarily unable to quickly chase in open terrain due to their injuries. And Nashipae is a shining example of this. For the past month and a half, the Nashipae’s family has spent most of the time in the park’s closed areas, where their disturbance is minimal. After the cubs discovered their mother being courted by two males, they spent the first two days hunting, but returned to the mother in the evening. Since the female was unable to follow the cubs, on the third day they began to wander further and further in search of prey and safe places to spend the night, relying only on themselves in hunting and encountering predators. The skills they learned from their mother helped them survive and occasionally hunt successfully. If the adults or young family or coalition members lost contact with their group-mates, they always return to the place where they last saw each other. Since February 14, both Nashipae and her cubs checked the field where the males had separated the family on different days. As soon as Nashipae entered the area with dense bush, leaving the males behind, she began hunting on her own. And although her injured left paw has not completely healed, hunting adult Impalas at close range helped the female regain her strength. The family finally reunited this morning, and the experience of living independently has been an important lesson for the cubs. If Nashipae’s mating with the Tano Bora males (or just one of them) was successful and results in pregnancy, Nashipae will leave her cubs within the next two months. However, this could happen sooner if her offspring decide they are ready for independent life, as happened to Nashipae’s mother, Rani, when her three 18-month-old cubs Neema, Nashipae, and their brother left their mother in 2016.