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Chasing Cheetahs: The Race to Save Africa's Fastest Cats

Chasing Cheetahs:  The Race to Save Africa's Fastest Cats
by Sy Montgomery, photographs by Nic Bishop
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014.  77 pgs.  Nonfiction

    Hands down cheetahs are the large cat of choice for school reports at the library.  So everyone should enjoy this latest offering from the boffo wildlife team of Sy Montgomery and Nic Bishop, who tell here the story of the Cheetah Conservation Fund and its leader, Laurie Marker. Marker and her colleagues, with the support of Namibia's government, have helped stave off extinction for the most endangered of the big cats in Africa. So much good information here about the cheetah, the fastest land animal, endangered not only by farmers killing them as predators, though they don't like livestock and rarely eat it, but by their own genetic weaknesses resulting from inbreeding. Montgomery and Bishop share the workings of the CCF, explaining the methods for healing injured and abandoned cheetahs and teaching them to return to the wild. Fascinating information as always from the ever-reliable Montgomery and Bishop.

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