Cheetahs Up Close with Bertie Gregory

In Cheetahs Up Close Bertie Gregory travels to Tanzania, East Africa on a mission to film cheetah.

He tracks them down in Serengeti national park, a haven for wildlife and ground zero for the great wildebeest migration. This spectacular event attracts cheetahs to come hunt from the 1.5 million strong herd, and Bertie uses a truck-mounted gyro-stabilised camera and drones to keep up with high-speed hunts.

As he gets close to a mother caring for her tiny cubs and a young group of males executing phenomenal hunts as a team, Bertie learns that life for cheetah is way more challenging than he first thought. There are more than ten times as many lions and hyenas in the Serengeti national park than there are cheetah. These bigger, stronger predators frequently steal the prey once cheetah catch it and will even kill their cubs if they find them.

He also sees how human activity within the park and surrounding areas further impacts the ability of cheetah to hunt and find mates. Bertie teams up with scientists collecting data to help understand these pressures and work with communities to plan land use in a way that supports cheetah survival.