cheetah capture and immobilisation handbook - Cat Specialist Group

In other countries, the use of playtrees has not been documented, but local people may
know of areas and structures where cheetahs frequent and use to defaecate and scentmark
– for instance, the use of cement block road-signs in Zimbabwe. Such sites are very
good capture locations as they have a relatively high visitation rate, and the cheetahs tend
to have a strong desire to get to the scent-marking site. This drive is used to capture
cheetahs, by blocking off access to the site and leaving only one access route, in which a
box-trap is placed. In Namibia, for instance, thorn bushes are cut down and packed
around playtrees, with a trap placed as the only way to get to the tree.
Figure 4: Placement of a box-trap by a playtree
(b) Roadways and fence-lines
In areas where sites such as playtrees are not known or cannot be used, another potential
capture site is along roadways and fence-lines. Especially in areas of fairly dense
vegetation, cheetahs, as well as other animals, tend to walk along roads and tracks. If
such a route is blocked off, for instance by using bushes to create a barrier, a cheetah will
often walk through an open gap where a box-trap can be placed. Fence-lines are another
popular route used by cheetahs and the same technique can be used to capture cheetahs
along fences. The most effective locations will be in areas where there is some evidence,
for instance by sightings of tracks, that cheetahs use those routes relatively regularly.
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