This species is listed on Appendix I of CITES and is protected under national legislation throughout most of its extant and some of its former range (Nowell and Jackson, 1996. However, a number of countries permit cheetahs to be killed in defence of life and livestock (Purchase et al., 2007). In Namibia, for example, one is permitted to retain the skin as long as the killing is reported (Nowell, 1996). Such policies may at least permit cheetah killing to be monitored.

Promotion of livestock management regimes which minimize conflict with cheetahs are an important conservation measure, pioneered by the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia (Marker et al., 2003) but now being applied more widely. Elements of successful conservation management include availability of wild prey and more intensive livestock herd protection, especially using guard dogs.

The Asiatic Cheetah is protected in Iran. The main protected areas for this species include Kavir National Park, Khar Touran National Park and Naybandan Wildlife Refuge, Bafgh P.A., and Dar Anjir Wildlife Refuge. A radio-telemetry study in Iran is providing the first detailed data on cheetahs in Iran (Hunter et al. 2007).

In 2009, the Afghan Government placed this species on the country’s Protected Species List, meaning all hunting and trading of this species within Afghanistan is now illegal.

Several countries, including Namibia and Kenya, have developed national action plans or conservation strategies for cheetahs (Nowell, 1996; Durant, 2007); regional conservation strategies have been developed for Southern (Dickman et al., 2006; Anon., 2008) and Eastern Africa (Anon., 2007); and there is also a global strategy (Bartels et al., 2002). These plans call for a number of improvements in monitoring, surveys and information exchange (to better understand cheetah distribution and status); promotion of human-cheetah coexistence (to reduce conflict and develop incentives to conserve cheetahs); national land use planning (to ensure viable national cheetah populations); capacity building (to improve management); policy and legislation (to ensure legal consistency and remove loopholes) and advocacy (to raise awareness of and political commitment to cheetah conservation needs).

Several specialist networks of cheetah conservationists have been established, including the Global Cheetah Forum (affiliated with the IUCN Conservation Breeding Specialist Group) and the North African Regional Cheetah Action Group (NARCAG/OGRAN). The IUCN SSC Cat Specialist Group maintains a Cheetah Conservation Compendium with a reference library and detailed country information (www.catsg.org)

Important protected areas that represent strongholds for Cheetah populations in Africa include the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park (South Africa, Botswana), Nxai Pan and Chobe National Parks, and Okavango Delta (Botswana), Etosha N.P. (Namibia), Liuwa Plains N.P. (Zambia), and, of course, the Serengeti N.P. (Tanzania, Kenya) (Caro in press). In West Africa, the major remaining stronghold for the species is the WAPO protected areas complex. There is a surviving population of Cheetah in the Ahaggar National Park in Algeria (Wacher et al. 2005).

However, most cheetah occur outside of protected areas (where they are often persecuted as pests), and given their need for large areas they require conservation action on a landscape scale (for example, human-wildlife conflict mitigation, zoning for land-use to maintain habitat connectivity, and wild prey restoration) (Marker, 2002; Anon., 2007).