Visitors on guided nature drives have already spotted the new family, said Marius Prinsloo, the manager of conservation and agriculture at Sir Bani Yas Island.
“Some groups have been lucky enough to encounter the female with the cubs,” Mr Prinsloo said yesterday. “The mother is very secretive about her movement, but the babies are very playful. They go around with her, following her wherever she goes and they’re fighting, rolling around, sneaking and chasing each other.”
As the cubs mature and grow into their hunting instincts, he said, Safira will take them on longer journeys. Safira is roughly 31kg and nearing six years old as a fully grown female.
The birth of the four cubs doubled the island’s population of northern cheetahs. The northern cheetah is classified as a “vulnerable” species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and is a close relative to the indigenous Arabian cheetah, which became extinct in the UAE in 1972.
“This is a very significant event because with these animals, both the mother and father were captive-bred,” Mr Prinsloo said.
“These animals were properly rehabilitated, brought here, and from that, these two zoo animals became truly wild and even had babies in the wild.”
The father, Gabriel, is not involved with raising the cubs, as female cheetahs are solitary and males are brought in purely for mating.Aimee Cokayne, the research and conservation officer at the wildlife park, said the animals mated in early October.
The cubs were born in a mountain cave without human interference, although Ms Cokayne, with whom the animals are familiar, tracked Safira by her radio collar.
“Aimee found a signal on the mother and it was the same place every time, so we suspected she was staying there because the cubs were born,” Mr Prinsloo said.
Identifying the sex of the cubs is tricky. Ms Cokayne has so far only been able to observe them from a distance.
“We think we have three males and a female, but we’re not 100 per cent sure,” she said in a video released by the Tourism Development & Investment Company, which runs the conservation project. She expected to be able to tell boys from girls in a few months.
Survival rates for cheetah cubs are low, but Ms Cokayne called it “a triumph” that Safira has been able to keep the family intact. “Having these cheetahs on the island and re-wilding and having them breed in a natural situation … that in itself is an amazing thing,” she said.
Earlier this year, two striped hyenas a species that is extinct in the UAE were born as part of the breeding programme. Also, Mr Prinsloo said four baby giraffes were born last month on the island.
