On Friday, eight of these wild cats, the world’s fastest land animals, were flown from Namibia in Africa to India as part of an effort to reintroduce them to the country. The global population of cheetahs is between 6,500 and 7,100, according to a list of threatened animals by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Africa is home to the most cheetahs, which have become extinct in all of Asia except Iran. They are largely extinct due to poaching, habitat shrinkage and loss of prey. “To save cheetahs from extinction, we need to create permanent places for them on Earth. India has areas of grasslands and forest habitats that are suitable for this species,” said Laurie Marker, founder of the Cheetah Conservation Fund, an international nonprofit that helped the governments of India and Namibia with the relocation effort. Under the elaborate plan, five female cheetahs and three males, aged between 2 and 6 years, were flown on a chartered Boeing 747 aircraft from Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, to Gwalior in the central state of Madhya Pradesh. (Organizers had previously said the cheetahs would first be sent to northern India.) The animals were then transported in a helicopter to nearby Kuno National Park, where they will be housed, said SP Yadav, head of India’s tiger conservation group overseeing the move. For the first month, the animals will be quarantined in an enclosure while being monitored for disease and adaptation. Once acclimated, they will be released into the 285 square miles of the national park. “This is the only large mammal that India has lost since independence. It is our moral and ethical responsibility to restore it,” Yadav said. India has seen an increase in tiger and leopard populations over the years, according to government figures. The number of tigers doubled to almost 3,000 between 2006 and 2018, despite a reduction in the forest area they occupy. Yadav said India’s goal is to develop a sustainable cheetah population in fenced areas. India’s plan, which costs about $11 million, aims to bring in about 50 cheetahs over the next few years from South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe. Some wildlife experts in India are skeptical. Ravi Chellam, a Bengaluru-based wildlife biologist and conservation scientist, said the project’s scientific underpinnings are “weak” and its conservation claims are “unrealistic”. Cheetahs, even in the best African habitats, exist at very low densities of about one animal per 38 square miles. That means Kuno National Park could only host seven to eight cheetahs, he said. “How will a self-sustaining, wild and free cheetah population become established in India when there is no suitable habitat of sufficient size to do so?” asked Chellam, CEO of the Metastring Foundation, a technology company working in the field of environment and public health. While he does not oppose relocation, he said, the project would redirect resources away from India’s more pressing conservation needs, such as moving Asiatic lions from forests in the state of Gujarat, the only such population of the subspecies left in the world. But the Environment Ministry and the relevant state governments have not acted on a 2013 Supreme Court order to relocate the lions, numbering in the hundreds, to the park in Kuno, where the cheetahs are released. “India’s wildlife action plan that guides conservation over a 15-year period prioritizes indigenous species that need a high degree of protection,” said Chellam. “We’re in 2022 and there’s no sign of lions shifting.” Preparations for the cheetah’s arrival have begun. On September 17, his birthday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi traveled to the national park to free the animals. Hundreds of locals, who have mobilized to raise awareness about the animals, were in attendance. Local media reported that in addition to surveillance towers equipped with CCTV cameras, drone teams will monitor the poachers. Reviving cheetah populations can be difficult. In South Africa, for example, cheetah expert Vincent van der Merwe worked to increase their population from 217 in 41 reserves in the country to more than 500 cheetahs in 69 reserves in four African countries. This successful approach, he said, relies on fenced reserves as well as preventing people from moving into protected areas where cheetahs live and cheetahs from coming into human-dominated areas and attacking the animals. Cheetahs are not the only animals that have been transported. The Giraffe Conservation Foundation, dedicated to the conservation and management of giraffes in more than a dozen countries in Africa, has overseen successful translocations within the continent. Stephanie Fennessy, the group’s executive director, said moving giraffes is very difficult given their size and physiology. “It takes time for animals to settle in and start breeding in their new environments. Post-transfer monitoring is therefore an important part of the process,” he said. Anant Gupta in Delhi contributed to this report.
