The Rietvlei Nature Reserve, in partnership with the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT), will reintroduce a male cheetah into its 3 800ha reserve, on November 14, after a two year absence of cheetahs from the reserve. 
The first introduction of cheetahs in Rietvlei, situated between Johannesburg and Pretoria, included two males in March 2003. These males lived until the age of 15 and died during 2012/2013 due to old age. In 2013 Rietvlei contacted the EWT's Cheetah Metapopulation Project with a request for new cheetahs as prey populations on the reserve were approaching unsustainable levels. 

Vincent van der Merwe, EWT's Cheetah Metapopulation Project coordinator, said: "An effective way to increase Cheetah numbers and to increase their range in South Africa is to reintroduce them onto small fenced reserves. A Cheetah population on one small reserve is not viable in the long-term but 50 small populations are viable if managed as a single population, the Metapopulation."  
Rietvlei is one of the reserves that forms part of the EWT’s Cheetah Metapopulation Project. A female cheetah is also currently being sought to join this male in early 2015.
For this reintroduction, a male cheetah was chosen from Sanbona Game Reserve, a 54 000ha private game reserve in the Western Cape which has provided cheetahs for several metapopulation reserves over the past few years including, Madikwe, Shamwari,Mabula, Nkomazi and Amakhala. 
Any offspring that are produced by the Rietvlei cheetahs will be distributed to other metapopulation reserves in conjunction with the EWT’s project. "Through the EWT Metapopulation project in South Africa, we have seen considerable growth in cheetah numbers," said van der Merwe.