Being Cruel to Be Kind

Yesterday, I returned from a two-week-long trip to Namibia, a country in southern Africa that still has a relatively large amount of intact natural ecosystems. My first few days there were spent at the headquarters of the Cheetah Conservation Fund, where a learned about the efforts under way to conserve these unique cats. While, as I mentioned before, conservation programs focused on single species are not always a good idea from an ecological standpoint, that is not what I am going to talk about this time.
Cheetahs are, of course, predators, and the ones at CCF were fed meat provided by local farmers. At least, this was true of the ones that lived their entire lived at headquarters and could not be returned to the wild. The majority of cheetahs living there were only kept there temporarily and would be released eventually. What were they eating?
As it turned out, they were eating exactly what they would be eating in the wild--gemsbok, impala, and other antelope. Certain members of the CCF staff would occasionally shoot these animals to feed them to the cheetahs. Most of the tourists who came to CCF were not told about this, but there was a very good reason (from an ecological perspective) why it had to be done.
A cheetah--or any predator--raised in captivity will not automatically know how to prey on wild animals. If the cheetahs intended to be released are fed the meat of farm animals, they will believe this is what they are "meant" to eat, and attack them out of habit. And predators that attack farm animals are usually shot or poisoned. The cheetahs that are destined to return to the wild, therefore, must know what prey will not bring them into conflict with humans.