Time to independence and predator-prey relationships of wild-born, captive-raised cheetahs released into private reserves in Namibia

Data associated with the manuscript:

Marker, L.,  Schmidt-Küntzel, A., Walker, E. H., Nghikembua, M., Cristescu, B. Time to independence and predator-prey relationships of wild-born, captive-raised cheetahs released into private reserves in Namibia. Ecological Solutions and Evidence.

Contact:

Dr. Bogdan Cristescu

bogdan@cheetah.org

Description:

This manuscript estimated the time to independence and cheetah-prey relationships for cheetahs released onto three private reserves in Namibia. The cheetahs were rescued as wild-born cubs, were raised in captivity and went through a rehabilitation process at the Cheetah Conservation Fund, Namibia, and then released with collars to monitor their success post-release in the wild.

The data is a MS Excel file that includes separate spreadsheets for:

- Time to independence ("TimeToIndependence"): number of weekly supplemental feedings of cheetahs post-release before achieving independence

- Prey composition ("PreyComposition"): the species, sex, age class, and size class of prey that cheetahs killed and were recorded during monitoring post-release  

- Prey availability ("PreyAvailability"): the prey species recorded along driven dirt road transects, and which were used to estimate prey density in a distance sampling framework 

- Habitat use ("HabitatUse"): the number of kills made by released cheetahs that have associated habitat class information, partitioned by chetah reproductive status (SF: solitary female, CF: coalition females, CM: coalition males)