CHASING CHEETAHS

Another fantastic offering from the SCIENTISTS IN THE FIELD, this book follows author Sy Montgomery and photographer extraordinaitreNic Bishop as they visit Laurie Marker, founder of the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of this organization's work, e.g. one chapter describes the cheetah's unique physical features, another explains how CCF trains cheetahs to reintroduce them into the wild, and still another about how Laurie works with the farmers, even giving them enormous Kangal dogs to protect their herds so they won't need to kill cheetahs. Yet another chapter describes how veterinarians provide physical examinations and health care to the cheetahs, and still another describes how scientists use DNA to trace cheetahs. Finally, there's a chapter about the organization works with school children, educating the next generation of cheetah conservationists. And as with most (all?) books in this series there are lots of related inset articles through the book- Fast Facts (did you know the cheetah can go 70 miles per hour, but can only sustain this speed for 400 to 600 yards), Cheetahs in Numbers (the species has dropped from more than 100,000 in 1900 to the current 10,000), how readers can help, etc.