Adorable three-month-old cheetah cubs, born to mum Darcy at the award-winning Yorkshire Wildlife Park, represent a major advance for the conservation of cheetahs whose numbers have fallen to around 7,000 in the wild.
Darcy, four, and their father 13-year-old Brook moved to the park’s Cheetah Territory last year and set up home in the three reserves and two specially-designed houses as part of a European breeding project.
The cubs were nurtured by Darcy in the enclosure for three months but are now strong enough to be allowed out to roam out across the 10,000 square metre reserve which is enriched with caves and grasslands.
Darcy, four, and their father 13-year-old Brook moved to the park’s Cheetah Territory last year and set up home in the three reserves and two specially-designed houses as part of a European breeding project.
The cubs were nurtured by Darcy in the enclosure for three months but are now strong enough to be allowed out to roam out across the 10,000 square metre reserve which is enriched with caves and grasslands.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Hi, so my name is Bex and I'm head of the carnivore team here at Yorkshire Wildlife
00:23Park.
00:24And we've got some really exciting news.
00:25So this morning our little cheetah cubs, we have two, are going to be going out into their
00:29front reserve and having a chance to explore.
00:33So we are really lucky here to have the cheetah cubs because cheetahs are notoriously quite
00:37hard to breed.
00:38The females can be quite picky, but Darcy and Brooke have done really, really well.
00:43So we did have a successful mating on Valentine's Day, so it was very, very fitting indeed.
00:48And now we have two youngsters.
00:51So our cheetahs are part of their breeding programme because they are listed as vulnerable
00:55in the wild, so it was super important that we were able to contribute to the breeding
01:00programme here at Yorkshire Wildlife Park.
01:02And they are notoriously difficult to breed, so we did really hit the jackpot on Valentine's
01:06Day with that successful mating that's resulted in two healthy cubs.
01:22They love that bit.
01:25Really?
01:26Yeah.
01:27They're not like lions.
01:28No.
01:29No.
01:30No.
01:31No.
01:32No.
01:33No.
01:34No.
01:35No.
01:36No.
01:37No.
01:38No.
01:39No.
01:40No.
01:41No.
01:42No.
01:43No.
01:44No.
01:45No.
01:46No.
01:47No.
01:48No.
01:49No.
01:50No.
01:51No.
01:52No.
01:53No.
01:54No.
01:55No.
01:56No.
01:57No.
01:58No.
01:59No.
02:00No.
02:01No.
02:02No.
02:03No.
02:04No.
02:05No.
02:06No.
02:07No.
02:08No.
02:09No.
02:10No.
02:11No.
02:12No.
02:13No.
02:14No.
02:15No.
02:16No.
02:17No.
02:18No.