Cheetah survival is a passion

She could be sitting on a cushy sofa somewhere with a purring house cat or two on her lap. But that wouldn't be enough for Mary Wykstra.

Instead, she spends days at a time in the wild African bush, sleeping on the hard ground in a pup tent and following paw prints to keep track of her "cats."

For three years, the 40-year-old former Hogle Zoo worker has devoted her life to studying cheetahs in Kenya in the hope of saving the magnificent animals from extinction. It is difficult work, fraught with dangers, but Mary can't imagine calling any other place home now.

To watch the sun rise over the African plain is a glorious thing, she says. "I come out of my tent, and I never know what I'm going to see. I might see an elephant, I might see giraffes. One morning, I came eye-to-eye with a buffalo."

Her favorite animal, the cheetah, is elusive, disappearing into the brush when humans are near. Sadly, Mary doesn't often get close to the animals unless they are shot by hunters.

"I don't know why anyone would want to kill them," she says. "We now have an agreement with hunting organizations in Namibia, where people can still get permits to kill cheetahs. They now at least allow scientific research to be done on the cheetahs, so we can get blood and skin samples. There is still a lot to be learned about these beautiful animals."

Mary was in Salt Lake City recently to help out at Hogle Zoo's Cheetah Cha-Cha, an annual fund-raiser for the Cheetah Conservation Fund — the organization she has worked for since moving to Kenya. Hoping to share her passion for cheetahs, she asked me to join her at the zoo for a Free Lunch of turkey baguettes and lemonade.

"People ask me why I'm passionate about cheetahs," she says, "and I suppose it's because of something in their eyes. I read a quote somewhere: 'To look into the eyes of a cheetah shows a history unknown to man.' To me, that's it. Something in their eyes says, 'We need help.' "

Camping in the bush with her laptop computer and binoculars, Mary has certainly come a long way from the little town of Martin, Mich., where she grew up. The youngest of 10 children, she spent a lot of time caring for wounded birds and feeding squirrels. "I told my father that I was going to work in Africa," she says, "but it always seemed like nothing more than a dream."