Factors That Determine Vigilance Behaviour And Reproductive Success Of Cheetah Mothers: A Case Study Of Maasai Mara National Reserve, Kenya

Abstract

There is a drastic decline in cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) population globally with human activities being among the major causes of this reduction. Visitation to areas of wilderness by tourists has been implicated for poor success in reproduction in wild cheetahs due to unchecked pressures associated with wildlife viewing activities such as commotion from overcrowding tourist vehicles and noise. These disrupt cheetah hunts, obscure cheetah view essential in scanning the environment for potential danger and prompt avoidance behaviors which increase their chances of being detected by potential predators. All these indirectly hinder success in cheetah cub recruitment due to malnutrition and aggravated predation related mortalities. Tourism a sector experiencing exponential growth throughout the world for its benefits to governments also plays a critical funding role in the conservation of species such as cheetahs. Therefore I conducted this research with an aim of assessing the impact of wildlife tourism on cheetah mothers focusing on vigilance as an anti-predation behavior, influence of vegetation cover on vigilance of cheetah mothers and cub recruitment success among cheetahs of Maasai Mara National Reserve. A generalized linear mixed effects model using lme4 in R was used to test hypotheses of the study. Results indicate that the probability of a cheetah mother being actively vigilant increased with increasing number of tourist vehicles at a sighting, cheetah mothers exhibited increased active vigilance with increasing vegetation cover, and cheetahs of Maasai Mara exhibit a very low reproductive success of 30%. However there was no enough evidence to correlate the low cub recruitment with elevated levels of vigilance among cheetah mothers. Based on these results I recommend creation of awareness addressing the low reproductive success among cheetahs of Maasai Mara, creation of policies to reduce the number of tour vehicles at wildlife sightings, further research to be conducted on direct causes of cheetah mortalities as well as nocturnal tendencies of cheetahs be investigated.