Kruger Opens a Year-Long Census on Its Elusive Cheetahs

SANParks and the Endangered Wildlife Trust have launched the Greater Kruger Cheetah Photographic Census, running September 2026 through August 2027 across the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area. The method leans on crowd-sourced imagery: visitor photographs from game drives are submitted and cross-referenced to identify individual cats by coat markings, the same approach used in prior EWT counts.

For advisors, this is a ready-made engagement hook. Guests booked into Kruger and the surrounding private reserves can be briefed before travel that their sighting photos may feed directly into the region's conservation record — a tangible, low-effort way to frame a game drive as more than a checklist. It's also worth setting expectations: the previous census put the population at roughly 116 individuals across the greater ecosystem, a useful, honest data point when clients ask how likely a cheetah sighting actually is.