Nature’s Best 2025
The Last Cheetahs continues to rack up awards on the international stage
It is always humbling when people enjoy and appreciate your work. Even more so when it is a big international competition. So it was with great enjoyment that I received an email notifying me that my film ‘The Last Cheetahs’ had been highly honoured in Nature’s Best Photography International Awards for 2025.
More even than that, is that this humble film, shot solo with no budget and with no big blue-chip backer has managed to continue to rack up (frankly unexpected) international accolades.
As I have written before, I really wanted this film to have the feel of a love letter to cheetahs. There is something utterly magical about getting to watch and spend time with these incredible predators. In particular cheetah mothers, for whom life really is a constant struggle for survival. To raise cheetah cubs successfully is nigh on impossible and yet it is what we often, as humans, simply expect them to do whilst simultaneously hindering, harming and hampering their every effort.
Every fence that blocks wildlife corridors and prevents prey animals from moving and thereby limiting cheetahs’ supply of food; every new camp built in a prime lion/leopard denning site because it is “pretty"that pushes these larger predators closer to cheetahs; every time we go off-road to a den leaving tyre tracks behind for hyenas to follow and kill the cubs; and every time we crowd around a cheetah trying to hunt and feed so that people can get a selfie with their phones preventing them from seeing incoming danger, or injuring them whilst jostling for position is just another hurdle that cheetahs must overcome.
But they simply cannot. Not anymore. The hurdles are too many. They are no longer natural.
When I first visited the Mara there were so many cheetahs it was unbelievable. So many mothers with cubs and often raising them successfully. When I decided to research for the film because it felt like cheetahs were struggling there were still many cheetahs around. By the time I finished filming in early 2024, there were 28 adult cheetahs in the Mara. As of July 2025 there are 16.
People may scoff that we could be witnessing the last cheetahs but the honest reality is that without proper support and understanding, in just a generation there are likely to be almost none left in Kenya. And only scattered pockets remaining in Africa. Research suggests that in the next 15 years the cheetah population will decline by between 50-70%. And this isn’t just hypothetical. In the 16 years between 1999 and 2015 Zimbabwe lost 85% of its cheetah population through land-grabs, fencing and political instability.
My hope with this film is that it resonates for anyone who watches it, that it makes you fall in love with cheetahs and most of all that it raises awareness for their plight.
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Watch the full film here.
(A shorter version submitted to Nature’s Best is available here).
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Thank you to Nature’s Best Photography International Awards for recognising this film. It means a lot and it is such an honour for it to be recognised amongst so many supremely talented photographers and videographers.