Cheetah Conundrum

Nairobi National Park is in great shape at the moment:it has always been a "dry-season" habitat, where the migratory species of ungulates (zebra,eland,gnu & kongoni) came when there was no grazing or, in the past, water, out in the dispersal area of the Athi-Kapiti plains. Of course everything has changed. Water is much more available as dams etc. have been dug out in the Maasai rangelands & the dispersal area in an increasingly humanised landscape unsuitable for free-ranging ungulates. Thus the drop in wildebeeste numbers from thousands in the past to just 150 in & around the park today.....
Nevertheless there are plenty of pluses in the present: all the 'introduced' species which make the park so interesting even when the migrant are 'out' -black rhino & buffalo, as well as the rapidly increasing giraffe population (which have much less roaming space than they used to...) are flourishing.
The controlled (& uncontrolled) burns by KWS in the Park last Xmas was the best thing to have happened to the Park in ages & as it is so dry, most of the biomass in the ecosystem has been in the park for most of the year, including the Grants & Thompsons gazelles which used to be such a feature of the Park but which moved out to the overgrazed rangeland in the dispersal area as the park became increasingly dominated by rank grassland & thicket in the abscence of the annual gnu migration (or managed burning).
The end result of all this has meant no food for CHEETAHS & for all of this year we have had just one male cheetah resident in the Park. We saw him last sunday, but this last tuesday, taking the children to school in the city, we saw another single cheetah. It is most likely to be the single male again, but the children,with the keen observation of childhood & with the training of many years gamespotting in the Park, said that it was a different individual; paler....
Let us hope it IS a different cheetah: a female & that with the new & better conditions for cheetah in the Park, we may have a return of these stunning creatures to the Nairobi Park....