Cheetahs are the fastest mammals on earth capable of accelerating from a standing start to 60

miles per hour in seconds. But now they are in a race against extinction. It's estimated that fewer

than 7,000 exist in the wild. Earlier, John Yang sat down with Lori Marker, a woman who's already

helped dramatically reduce one threat to cheetahs and is tackling new ones that have emerged.

She's the executive director of the Cheetah Conservation Fund,

which is based in Namibia and the subject of our weekend spotlight.

Lori, how has the threat to cheetahs evolved in the time you've been working with them?

Mostly it's human wildlife conflict, loss of habitat, the illegal wildlife pet trade.

And as human numbers grow in Africa, and we're not addressing much around the poverty issues,

we end up having more and more of these problems, not only for cheetahs, but all the other predators.

And when you first got to Namibia, it was farmers? You'd call them ranchers here, but they are livestock farmers.

And they were killing hundreds of cheetahs every year.

And how did you go about addressing that?

Going door to door, talking with the farmers,

addressing their questions.

They wanted to know how cheetahs lived.

I wanted to know how cheetahs lived on their land. I wanted to know about their farming systems.

Their livestock. Did they protect them? I learned from them what they needed to know in order to live with cheetahs,

and they taught me a lot about what they didn't know so I could make a plan.

And how much of a difference did that make?

Oh, I think it's made a huge difference.

They accepted me.

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