Doomed to extinction
Sir: Politics aside, South Africa is famed for gold, diamonds, Table Mountain and the Kruger National Park. In a country as wildlife- and conservation-conscious as South Africa is, how is it possible that Mr Botha, in announcing his country's 'own' fighter plane, could have been unaware of the deep irony in the choice of a name for the aircraft — Cheetah (Portrait of the week, 26 July)?
Thousands of years ago this beautiful, highly specialised animal ranged through- out the world. At a certain point in time its gene pool became so uniform, according to a recent article in Scientific American (May 1986), that it became incapable of adapta- tion to ecological change and its resistance to disease was drastically reduced. By the turn of the century its range was limited to Africa and western Asia, and it now occurs in less than half of Africa and not at all in Asia. It has a low rate of reproduction and without the assistance of captive breeding it is an animal almost certainly doomed to natural extinction!
John Kemp
16 All& des Merisiers, 45100 Orleans, France
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