Local communities who may face ongoing problems arising from living alongside wildlife within the Cheetah Landscapes may also represent cheetahs’ first line of defence. These communities usually live outside protected areas, often struggling to sustain their livelihoods, where a large proportion of the continent’s cheetah population also persists and may also struggle to survive within an increasingly human-dominated landscape.

The long-term survival of wide-ranging species such cheetah and African wild dogs therefore relies to a large extent on the goodwill of these communities and their tolerance for living alongside carnivores which may also impose significant costs on them due to livestock depredation. The need for local engagement in finding acceptable solutions to living alongside cheetahs is therefore critical to conservation success. Considering communities as equal partners alongside government and non-government stakeholders, the CCI aims to increase community incentives/benefits for wildlife stewardship and decrease the costs of living alongside large carnivores, to ensure that cheetah conservation goes hand-in-hand with the well-being and sustainable development of vulnerable local communities. Practical and viable options that, for example, support alternative livelihoods and HWC mitigation, are identified through a participatory process and then trialled and, if successful, scaled up.