Cheetah reintroduction in India

More than 70 years after India's native subspecies of the cheetah—the Asiatic cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus)—became extinct there, small numbers of Southeast African cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus jubatus) have been flown in from Namibia and South Africa to a national park in India. The experiment has been permitted by India's supreme court on a short-term basis to test long-term adaptation. The Asiatic subspecies is now found only in Iran in critically endangered numbers.^[1]

The Asiatic cheetah whose long history on the Indian subcontinent gave the Sanskrit-derived vernacular name "cheetah", or "spotted", to the entire species, Acinonyx jubatus, also had a gradual history of habitat loss there. In Punjab, before the thorn forests were cleared for agriculture and human settlement, they were intermixed with open grasslands grazed by large herds of blackbuck; these co-existed with their main natural predator, the Asiatic cheetah.^[2] The blackbuck is no longer extant in Punjab.^[2] Later, more habitat loss, prey depletion, and trophy hunting were to lead to the extinction of the Asiatic cheetah in other regions of India.

Discussions on cheetah reintroduction in India began soon after extinction was confirmed, in the mid-1950s. Proposals were made to the governments of Iran from the 1970s, but fell through chiefly for reasons of political instability there. Offers from Kenya for introducing African cheetahs were made as early as the 1980s. Proposals for the introduction of African cheetahs were made by the Indian government in 2009, but disallowed by India's supreme court. The court reversed its decision in early 2020, allowing the import of a small number, on an experimental basis for testing long-term adaptation. On 17 September 2022, five female and three male southeast African cheetahs, between the ages of four and six (a gift from the government of Namibia), were released in a small quarantined enclosure within the Kuno National Park in the state of Madhya Pradesh.^[3] The cheetahs, all fitted with radio collars, will remain in the quarantined enclosure for a month; initially, the males (and later the females) will be released into the 748.76 km² (289.10 sq mi) park. The relocation has been supervised by Yadvendradev V. Jhala of the Wildlife Institute of India and zoologist Laurie Marker, of the Namibia-based Cheetah Conservation Fund. Subsequently, 12 cheetahs from South Africa will be released in Kuno; eventually, the total number of African cheetahs in Kuno will be brought up to 40 individuals.^[4] As of May 25, 2023, three adult cheetahs from Africa and three cubs (of four born in Kuno two months earlier) had died in Kuno National Park.

The scientific reaction to the translocation has been mixed. Adrian Tordiffe (a wildlife veterinary pharmacologist at the University of Pretoria who will be supervising the release of the cheetahs) is an enthusiast, who views India as providing "protected space" for the fragmented and threatened population of the world's cheetahs.^[5] K. Ullas Karanth, one of India's tiger experts, has been critical of the effort, considering it to be a "PR exercise." India's "realities", he says, such as human overpopulation, and the presence of larger feline predators and packs of feral dogs, could all cause potentially "high mortalities," and require a continual import of African cheetahs.^[6] Kuno National Park is a relatively new national park, having received that status in 2018. It had been founded previously as a wildlife sanctuary to implement the Asiatic Lion Reintroduction Project, which aimed to establish a second Asiatic lion population in India. The goal was to protect the isolated lions of the Gir National Park (in Gujarat) from a potential mass mortality event, set off by the outbreak of an epizootic.^[7] Although the state government of Gujarat was ordered by India's Supreme Court in April 2013 to transfer a small population of lions from Gujarat to Kuno, and was given six months to complete the transfer, they ultimately resisted implementing the order.^[8]

^ Schmall, Emily; Kumar, Hari (16 September 2022). "After 75 Years, Cheetahs Return to India in a Grand Experiment". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 28 September 2022. Retrieved 23 September 2022. Cheetahs once prowled India among lions, tigers and leopards. They appear in ancient Hindu texts and in cave paintings, and are woven into centuries-old tapestries. The Mughal emperor Akbar kept 1,000 cheetahs in his stables. But for 75 years — the entirety of its existence as an independent nation — India has been bereft of cheetahs, the world's fastest land animal.
^ ^a ^b Tritsch, M. F. (2001), Wildlife of India, London: HarperCollins, p. 17, ISBN 978-0-00-711062-9, Before it was so heavily settled and intensively exploited, the Punjab was dominated by thorn forest interspersed by rolling grasslands which were grazed on by millions of Blackbuck, accompanied by their dominant predator, the Cheetah. Always keen hunters, the Moghul princes kept tame cheetahs which were used to chase and bring down the blackbuck. Today the Asiatic cheetah is extinct in India and the severely endangered blackbuck no longer exists in the Punjab.
^ Schmall, Emily; Kumar, Hari (16 September 2022). "After 75 Years, Cheetahs Return to India in a Grand Experiment". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 28 September 2022. Retrieved 23 September 2022. The eight cheetahs were a gift from the government of Namibia. The plan is to translocate batches of cheetahs from southern Africa until India achieves a population of around 40.
^ Schmall, Emily; Kumar, Hari (16 September 2022). "After 75 Years, Cheetahs Return to India in a Grand Experiment". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 28 September 2022. Retrieved 23 September 2022. The cheetahs from Namibia, five females and three males between the ages of 2 and 5, were selected because of their hunting skills, familiarity with humans and genetic profiles, said Laurie Marker, an American zoologist who is the executive director of the Cheetah Conservation Fund, the project's main partner.
^ Schmall, Emily; Kumar, Hari (16 September 2022). "After 75 Years, Cheetahs Return to India in a Grand Experiment". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 28 September 2022. Retrieved 23 September 2022. 'We should be thinking of the global cheetah population as a single fragmented population that needs to be conserved,' said Dr. Adrian Tordiffe, a wildlife veterinarian in South Africa who is helping to prepare a second batch of 12 cheetahs that India hopes to receive next month. 'What cheetahs need more than anything is protected space,' Dr. Tordiffe said. 'India offers a wonderful opportunity for the cheetah in terms of protected space.'
^ Schmall, Emily; Kumar, Hari (16 September 2022). "After 75 Years, Cheetahs Return to India in a Grand Experiment". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 28 September 2022. Retrieved 23 September 2022. 'This project is putting the cart before the horse,' said Ullas Karanth, a conservation zoologist at the Center for Wildlife Studies in Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore. The animals 'will have high mortalities, and a constant supply of new cheetahs will be involved,' he added. 'I do not see this "rewilding" of free-ranging cheetahs in India. It is more of a P.R. exercise.'
^ Khudsar, F. A.; Sharma, K.; Rao, R. J.; Chundawat, R. S. (2008). "Estimation of prey base and its implications in Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary". Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society. 105 (1): 42–48.
^ Anand, U. (2013). Supreme Court gives Madhya Pradesh lions' share from Gujarat's Gir Archived 20 May 2013 at the Wayback Machine. The Indian Express Ltd., 17 April 2013.

[schmall-kumar-nytimes_cheetah-extinction-1] Schmall, Emily; Kumar, Hari (16 September 2022). "After 75 Years, Cheetahs Return to India in a Grand Experiment". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 28 September 2022. Retrieved 23 September 2022. Cheetahs once prowled India among lions, tigers and leopards. They appear in ancient Hindu texts and in cave paintings, and are woven into centuries-old tapestries. The Mughal emperor Akbar kept 1,000 cheetahs in his stables. But for 75 years — the entirety of its existence as an independent nation — India has been bereft of cheetahs, the world's fastest land animal.

[tritsch-cheetah-blackbuck-2] Tritsch, M. F. (2001), Wildlife of India, London: HarperCollins, p. 17, ISBN 978-0-00-711062-9, Before it was so heavily settled and intensively exploited, the Punjab was dominated by thorn forest interspersed by rolling grasslands which were grazed on by millions of Blackbuck, accompanied by their dominant predator, the Cheetah. Always keen hunters, the Moghul princes kept tame cheetahs which were used to chase and bring down the blackbuck. Today the Asiatic cheetah is extinct in India and the severely endangered blackbuck no longer exists in the Punjab.

[schmall-kumar-nytimes-8cheetahs-3] Schmall, Emily; Kumar, Hari (16 September 2022). "After 75 Years, Cheetahs Return to India in a Grand Experiment". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 28 September 2022. Retrieved 23 September 2022. The eight cheetahs were a gift from the government of Namibia. The plan is to translocate batches of cheetahs from southern Africa until India achieves a population of around 40.

[schmall-kumar-nytimes-marker-4] Schmall, Emily; Kumar, Hari (16 September 2022). "After 75 Years, Cheetahs Return to India in a Grand Experiment". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 28 September 2022. Retrieved 23 September 2022. The cheetahs from Namibia, five females and three males between the ages of 2 and 5, were selected because of their hunting skills, familiarity with humans and genetic profiles, said Laurie Marker, an American zoologist who is the executive director of the Cheetah Conservation Fund, the project's main partner.

[schmall-kumar-nytimes-tordiffe-5] Schmall, Emily; Kumar, Hari (16 September 2022). "After 75 Years, Cheetahs Return to India in a Grand Experiment". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 28 September 2022. Retrieved 23 September 2022. 'We should be thinking of the global cheetah population as a single fragmented population that needs to be conserved,' said Dr. Adrian Tordiffe, a wildlife veterinarian in South Africa who is helping to prepare a second batch of 12 cheetahs that India hopes to receive next month. 'What cheetahs need more than anything is protected space,' Dr. Tordiffe said. 'India offers a wonderful opportunity for the cheetah in terms of protected space.'

[schmall-kumar-nytimes-karanth-6] Schmall, Emily; Kumar, Hari (16 September 2022). "After 75 Years, Cheetahs Return to India in a Grand Experiment". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 28 September 2022. Retrieved 23 September 2022. 'This project is putting the cart before the horse,' said Ullas Karanth, a conservation zoologist at the Center for Wildlife Studies in Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore. The animals 'will have high mortalities, and a constant supply of new cheetahs will be involved,' he added. 'I do not see this "rewilding" of free-ranging cheetahs in India. It is more of a P.R. exercise.'

[Khudsar_al2008-7] Khudsar, F. A.; Sharma, K.; Rao, R. J.; Chundawat, R. S. (2008). "Estimation of prey base and its implications in Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary". Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society. 105 (1): 42–48.

[8] Anand, U. (2013). Supreme Court gives Madhya Pradesh lions' share from Gujarat's Gir Archived 20 May 2013 at the Wayback Machine. The Indian Express Ltd., 17 April 2013.

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