In the last century, the wild cheetah population has collapsed by over 90%, from an estimated 100,000 individuals to just 7,000.
The Masai Mara in Kenya is one of the cheetahs’ last remaining strongholds.
Even here they are in decline.
Following making our film, The Last Cheetahs, we decided to begin fundraising to help conserve and protect wild cheetahs. From discussions with researchers, guides, rangers and conservancy managers as well as from reading the reams of research papers and studies that went into the background of the film, it became clear that there is not a major plan or direction for cheetah conservation - particularly in Kenya’s Masai Mara.
The clearest area where cheetah research struggles is in the total lack of a shared database of cheetahs across the Mara and Serengeti.
Given this issue, we have partnered with Tech 4 Conservation to create an AI-driven cheetah recognition database.
This database will be available to everyone. Tourists will be able to upload photos of cheetah sightings and receive an accurate identification of the individual cheetah and their biography.
Ultimately, this database will be able to recognise individual cheetahs and identify them as adults even from photographs of them as cubs allowing researchers to better track and understand dispersing cheetahs, where they are moving to, what areas they prefer, where they are moving into the communities, and where there is greater danger.
Phase 1 - App Development
Basic sighting app allowing for reporting of sightings, image & meta-data transfer to the site and then feedback from curated IDs.
At this point there is expected to be no AI functionality built into the app but rather that the app will be used to curate and capture information that will help inform the Mara-Serengeti database for cheetahs. Users will still have positive identification of cheetahs and biographies once identified, but this will not take place in-app.