The Cheetah Man: Fota Director Sean McKeown on a life working with the wild bunch

It was a dream that took five years to make a reality. Director Sean McKeown explains to Vickie Maye the significance of the rare birth of a Sumatran Tiger cub at Fota Wildlife Park.

Sean McKeown has an office view that dreams are made of. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlook the cheetah run at Fota Wildlife Park. Every so often one of them swaggers past the window, sometimes stopping to stare through the glass. There had been talk of a wall to border the cheetahs and the office building when Fota’s entrance was revamped in 2010, but the wildlife park’s director put a stop to that. The view he secured is only right for the person known in the industry as ‘The Cheetah Man’.

McKeown holds the stud book in Europe for the Northern cheetah, deciding if and when they should be bred in zoos around Europe. Under his watch, there has been a hugely successful cheetah breeding programme at Fota — to date, more than 200 have been born, the latest on May 29. The four cubs, two male and two female, went on view to the public for the first time last Thursday. It’s the second birth this year for mother Nimpy.