"If a cheetah charges at us, make sure you look him in the eye,” warns my guide.

“Whatever you do, don’t turn away from him or you’ll be going home with claw marks down your back.”

I love the fact Armin had waited until now to tell me this.

He could have imparted this advice back at the lodge, but instead he waits until we’re treading the dusty Namibian bush in AfriCat’s rehabilitation park, a 16,000ha reserve populated by some rather peckish cheetahs.

Oh, and some leopards too.

Not only are we walking through big cat country, but we’re also actively seeking its cheetah inhabitants. And even with Armin’s antiquated tracking equipment (an aerial and analogue receiver), we soon locate what we’re looking for, Charlie and Trish.

The siblings are taking shade underneath an acacia tree as the last of the day’s sunshine disappears behind the mountains – it’s an unforgettable scene. Trish is fast asleep, unaware of our presence, while Charlie scans the undergrowth looking for predators, stopping occasionally to eye up his visitors.

“A farmer shot their mother. When he approached her body he found two cubs with her,” explains Armin.

“So he called us.”

It’s a familiar story in Namibia. As their natural habitat is consumed by agriculture, big cats suddenly find themselves on agricultural land, hunting livestock; conflict with farmers is inevitable.

As Armin recounts Trish and Charlie’s story, I spot another cheetah darting through the bush.

“That’ll be Cyclops,” says Armin. “He hangs around with these guys, but runs off whenever we come.

“This is the behaviour we’re looking for in the cheetahs we hope to release, because a habituated cheetah won’t last five minutes in the wild.”

To graduate from the rehabilitation programme, which is like a halfway house between captivity and the wild, cats also need to demonstrate survival skills. It turns out that Cyclops was a late bloomer in this department.

The hapless cheetah was brought here with a thorn lodged in what had become a badly infected eye. Unfortunately vets were forced to remove the eye, hence the name Cyclops.

To see how this affected him, AfriCat eventually released Cyclops into its original 4500ha reserve. He failed to make a kill, and were it not for handouts he’d have starved. Fearing for his wellbeing, the foundation transferred him to a 50ha holding pen.

To subscribe or buy back issues, click here 

This was a setback for AfriCat’s rehabilitation programme, which had got off to a successful start when it admitted its first cheetahs a decade ago. They were siblings Eenie, Meenie, Miney and Mo, and two of them proved a lot of people wrong.

Although Miney and Mo died from an outbreak of anthrax, Eenie and Meenie answered the critics who said you couldn’t reintroduce cheetahs back into the wild. After learning survival skills at the reserve they were released into the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park, where they still roam today.

Eenie and Meenie had set the benchmark, so when four more orphaned cheetahs arrived, the foundation hoped to repeat this success.

Sadly, Zeus, Athena, Apollo and Artemis would never make it into the wild. 

“It took Apollo three weeks to make his first kill,” recalls Armin. “And that was a bunny.”

While Apollo underachieved, Zeus and Athena were hunting above their weight, with grave consequences. Zeus was killed by a giraffe and Athena was fatally wounded by the horns of an oryx.

Dealing another blow to the rehabilitation programme, Apollo died fighting with a leopard, while Artemis was killed by a hyena. Leopards had roamed the bush here long before AfriCat’s fence went up and conflict was perhaps unavoidable, but the hyenas were introduced to increase diversity in the park, which proved an ill-fated decision.

“It’s a case of trial and error,” admits Carla Conradie, AfriCat’s director of welfare. “We have to learn from our mistakes.”

Their deaths taught them that the 4500ha reserve wasn’t big enough for so many predators and the rehabilitation programme stalled.

Happily, AfriCat were enjoying success elsewhere. Their rescue and release programme was going well, and still is. At the time of print they had rescued 1045 cheetahs and leopards that had been injured or trapped by farmers. Of those, 884 have been rehabilitated and released.

When farmers are involved in trapping incidents, AfriCat visit them to offer them information about the benefits of big cats on their land.

“When you remove a cat it creates a void, and you might get several cats trying to fill it,” says Armin. “This would make his losses worse.”

They also advise farmers on how to protect their livestock – apparently, cattle defence can come in the most unlikely form.

“Donkeys,” says Armin. “They’ll defend a herd of cattle with their lives. We tried it and it works.”

AfriCat’s diplomacy has seen 86 per cent of farmers agree to release cats back on their land. “Although it’s not a five minute job,” admits Carla.

Convinced that education was the future, in 2001 AfriCat built a classroom at the reserve, where they teach children (the farmers of tomorrow) about the importance of big cats.

The results are encouraging.

“There was a farmer who kept calling us, saying: ‘I’ve got a cheetah and I’m going to kill it,’” recalls Armin. “One day he called and said: ‘I’ve caught two leopards. Can you pick them up?’”

So Dave Haughton, the rescue and release officer, went to the ranch. When he arrived he asked why the farmer hadn’t shot them like the others. 

“He said that his daughter had gone on one of our education days and told him not to kill them.”

Boosted by success stories like these, AfriCat were keen to kick-start their dormant rehabilitation programme.

However, they needed more land, and although 16,000 hectares of neighbouring bush was on the market, they couldn’t afford it. The revenue from tourists staying at the reserve might cover AfriCat’s running costs, but it could hardly fund expansion.

Then all of their Christmases came at once.

Moved by a programme he’d watched about AfriCat, a British man bequeathed a small fortune to the foundation when he died. This, along with other foreign investment, enabled AfriCat to purchase the land, and in May 2010 its transformation into a protected game reserve was complete. In 2011 they hope to merge the new and old park, creating a single 20,000ha reserve.

Since opening, the new reserve has admitted 13 cheetahs, including Cyclops, who was given a second chance on the programme. “He’s turned into a serial killer,” laughs Armin.

If and when they are ready for the wild, AfriCat will need to find a safe place to release the cats. That might sound easy in a country that is more than three times the size of the UK, yet only has two million inhabitants. But advancing agriculture, a growing population and some of the most inhospitable desert in Africa leave plenty of challenges.

“Rehabilitation isn’t the answer,” says Carla. “The answer is stopping farmers shooting them.”

That could take a while, but in the meantime the rehabilitation programme strives to continue its good work.

“Now that we have a bigger area, this is a great opportunity for us to make progress,” says Tristan Boehme, AfriCat’s CEO.

“We’re currently looking at re-homing five cheetahs, but we need a steady flow going through rehabilitation before we can make any grand claims.”

They might have a long way to go, but AfriCat’s hard work is paying off, let’s hope the next decade is as successful as their last.