On November 9, I will travel from Edinburgh to Amsterdam. Against several other teams from the University of Edinburgh, my teammate Jasmine and I will run, swim, or fly to Amsterdam, attempting to beat out the competition and be the first to get there.
The only catch? We can't spend a penny on transport. That's right - we've got to beg, borrow, steal, or hitchhike our way to Amsterdam.
And all this is for charity.
My supported charity is the Cheetah Conservation Fund, which I have been supporting for some time now.
*Insects not included. Especially not butterflies. Good god, I'm terrified of butterflies.
Cheetahs are one of my favourite animals. I first heard about the Cheetah Conservation Fund years ago, about seven years ago I think now, and I was impressed by what they do with their work; I started donating to the Cheetah Conservation Fund about three years ago.
Cheetah numbers are dangerously low, and they are listed as a vulnerable species. I know it doesn't sound as important as 'critically endangered' like the black rhino or the hawksbill sea turtle, but we shouldn't wait until they are critically endangered before we start thinking about saving them, right?
On that note, the Asiatic Cheetah subspecies found in Iran is in fact classified as being critically endangered.
About 10,000 years ago, cheetahs were forced by abrupt climate changes to heavily inbreed, as many types of cheetahs went extinct. This means that the current genetic population of cheetahs is not very diverse at all. They are so closely related that the cheetah species today has an unusually high susceptibility to disease and sudden changes in their environment - disease is likely to affect not just one individual cheetah, but the entire species.
Cheetahs continually face the threat of being hunted by farmers; because of human encroachment on cheetah territory, cheetahs are being forced to hunt livestock. When livestock gets killed, farmers get angry and hunt down the cheetah that killed their animal. On top of that, cheetahs have a very slow rate of reproduction, and when they do, 90% of their young are killed within a few weeks of their life. Tell me that doesn't make you sad :(
So what does the CCF do? Because humans are one of the cheetah's biggest predators, the CCF prevents or minimises cheetah-human conflict by introducing the Anatolian Shepherd Dog to farmers, which guards the livestock and prevents cheetahs from killing livestock before anything happens. And when damage does occur, they ask farmers to go to them for assessment and compensation rather than having the farmers hunting down this already threatened species.
The CCF works with farmers to produce Cheetah Country Beef, or meat that is sold from farmers who have pledged not to kill cheetahs.
On top of that, the CCF runs an orphanage programme for abandoned cubs. Cheetahs rescued from cages or abandoned because their mother has been killed by predators are raised with the CCF, and released back into the wild when they are ready.
The CCF has a centre in Namibia where you can go and work with the cheetahs and help with conservation work; I want to go to Namibia to work with cheetahs there so badly!!! Only 10,000 cheetahs remain in the wild, of which 30% are in Namibia. Also, only 70-100 critically endangered Asiatic cheetahs remain, almost all of them in Iran.
My friend Jasmine's supported charity is Breakthrough Breast Cancer, which campaigns for healthcare improvements in the UK and fights breast cancer through research and awareness.
So if you would like to help save the cheetah or contribute to fighting cancer, you can help us by donating to our team, Wanderlust With Purpose, as we make our way to Amsterdam!
(We are not affiliated in any way with Passports With Purpose. We simply grabbed Wanderlust With Purpose as our team name because we were inspired by PWP's example.)
Our team target is £350, so please donate as much as you can spare to help these charities.
The race will start at Bristo Square, 9AM on the 9th of November 2012. From the starting line, we'll all be giving everything we've got to get to Amsterdam.
To help us, please click here. The link to this donation will also stay in the blog sidebar for at least the next 6 months, should you wish to go back at any time and donate more.
See you at the finish line!
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