Research overview: cheetah camera-trapping and individual identification

Cheetahs carry distinctive spot patterns that allow individual identification, but their low densities, wide ranging, and preference for open habitats pose particular challenges for camera trapping. This overview surveys approaches to surveying cheetahs, including placing cameras at marking trees and scent posts that cheetahs visit repeatedly, exploiting their territorial behavior to boost captures, and applying spatially explicit capture-recapture across large arrays. It discusses identification from spot patterns and tail rings, the difficulty of sparse detections for a naturally rare cat, and the integration of camera data with spoor surveys and telemetry. The overview highlights how camera trapping contributes density estimates and distribution data essential for conserving a declining species across fragmented African and Asian ranges, and how marking-site cameras provide an effective, behavior-informed survey strategy for this fast, elusive cat.