New York, Dec 13: With cheetah population in southern Africa found to be 11 per cent smaller than recent estimates, an intertiol team of scientists has called for uplisting the cats’ conservation status from “vulnerable” to “endangered” on the Intertiol Union for Conservation of ture (IUCN) Red List. Populations of cheetahs in southern Africa have declined as farming and other human activities push deeper into the free-roaming cats’ range, said the study published in the jourl PeerJ.