The arrival of the big cats – the fastest land animal on Earth – coincides with the 72nd birthday of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who released the first cat in the park on Saturday. It is the culmination of a 13-year effort to restore a species that disappeared from India about 70 years ago. The high-profile project is the first time wild cheetahs have been moved across continents to be released. It has raised questions from scientists who say the government needs to do more to protect the country’s struggling wildlife. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comSign up The cheetahs – five females and three males – arrived after a two-day journey by plane and helicopter from the African savanna and are expected to spend two to three months in a 6 square kilometer (2 square mile) enclosure. park in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. If all goes well with their acclimatization at Kuno, the cats will be freed to roam the 5,000 square kilometers (2,000 square miles) of forest and grassland, sharing the landscape with leopards, sloth bears and striped hyenas. Another 12 cheetahs are expected to join the fledgling Indian population next month from South Africa. And as India raises more funding for the 910 million rupee ($11.4 million) project, which is largely funded by state-owned Indian Oil, it hopes to eventually increase the population to about 40 cats. SP Yadav of the National Tiger Conservation Authority said the extinction of the cheetah in India in 1952 was the only time the country had lost a large mammal species since independence. “It is our moral and ethical responsibility to bring it back.” But some Indian conservation experts have called the effort a “vanity project” that ignores the fact that the African cheetah – a subspecies similar to but separate from the critically endangered Asiatic cheetah now found only in Iran – is not native to the Indian subcontinent. And with India’s 1.4 billion human population traveling for land, biologists worry that cheetahs won’t have enough room to roam without being killed by predators or humans. India last year joined a UN pledge to conserve 30% of its land and ocean land by 2030, but today less than 6% of the country’s territory is protected. Bringing back the cheetah “is our effort to preserve the environment and wildlife,” Modi said.
THE NOTED
While cheetahs today are most often associated with Africa, the word “cheetah” comes from the Sanskrit word “chitraka”, meaning “the spotted”. At one point, the Asiatic cheetah ranged widely across North Africa, the Middle East and across India. During the time of the Mughal empire, domesticated cheetahs served as royal hunting companions, chasing down prey on behalf of their masters. But the hunters later turned their guns on the cheetah itself. Today, only 12 remain in Iran’s arid regions. A cheetah rests after being prepared for transport to India at the CCF center in Otjiwarongo, Namibia, September 12, 2022. Courtesy of Cheetah Conservation Fund/Handout via REUTERS read more Project Cheetah, launched in 2009 under former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government, appeared to offer India a chance to right a historic wrong and boost its environmental reputation. India’s successes in managing the world’s largest wild tiger population prove it has the credentials to bring back cheetahs, Yadav said. But even among African countries, “there have been few (moves) for cheetahs in large or unfenced areas that have been successful,” said Kim Young-Overton, cheetah program director at Panthera, a global wildcat conservation organization. . To prepare the cheetahs for success, authorities are moving villagers from Bagcha near Kuno. Officials are also vaccinating pet dogs in the area against diseases that could spread to cats. And wildlife officials have controlled the park’s game, ensuring enough spotted deer, blue bulls, wild boars and porcupines to sustain the cheetahs’ diet. Indian Oil has committed more than 500 million rupees ($6.3 million) to the project over the next five years.
CATS DOGED BY DIFFERENCES
Some Indian scientists say that modern India presents challenges that animals did not face in the past. A single cheetah needs a lot of space to roam. An area of 100 square kilometers (38 sq mi) can support six to 11 tigers, 10 to 40 lions, but only one cheetah. Once the cheetahs cross the fenced boundaries of Kuno, “they will be beaten within six months by domestic dogs, by leopards,” said wildlife biologist Ullas Karanth, director of the Center for Wildlife Studies in Bangalore. “Or they will kill a goat, and the villagers will poison them” in response. Poaching fears blocked another project that included a 2013 Supreme Court ruling to move some of the world’s last Asiatic lions from their only sanctuary in the western Indian state of Gujarat to Kuno. Now, cheetahs will occupy this space. “Cheetahs cannot be India’s burden,” said wildlife biologist Ravi Chellam, a scientific authority on Asiatic lions. “These are African animals found in dozens of locations. The Asiatic lion is a single population. A simple examination of the situation shows which species should be the priority.” Other conservation experts say the promise of restoring cheetahs in India is worth the challenges. “Cheetahs play an important role in grassland ecosystems,” herding prey through grasslands and preventing overgrazing, said conservation biologist Laurie Marker, founder of the Cheetah Conservation Fund who is leading the Namibian side of the project. Marker and her colleagues will help monitor the cats’ settlement, hunting and breeding in the coming years. Modi urged people to be patient as the cats adjust. “For them to be able to make Kuno National Park their home, we will have to give these Cheetahs a few months.” Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comSign up Reporting by Gloria Dickie in London and Tanvi Mehta in New Delhi. Editing by Katy Daigle, Mike Collett-White and Frank Jack Daniel Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
