India’s ambitious plan to reintroduce cheetahs to the Indian subcontinent, which kicked off on 17 September with the release of eight individuals by prime minister Narendra Modi, is unlikely to succeed because the habitat provided is inadequate, scientists warn.
, most of them in Africa, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The Asiatic cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus), a subspecies that is now only found in Iran, went extinct in India in 1952.
Now, the country is offering to provide an additional viable habitat for the cats in Kuno National Park in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, an area measuring 748 square kilometres. Five females and three males from the southeast African cheetah subspecies (Acinonyx jubatus jubatus) have so far been relocated from Namibia.
Advertisement
Laurie Marker, executive director of the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia and coordinator of the project, says great care has been taken to ease the cheetahs into their new home. “The cats have been in quarantine for a month [before being brought to India], and they will soon be moved into an enclosure of about 100 hectares, where they will be able to stretch their muscles,” she says.
“From there, they will be systematically put back out into the wild, starting with the males, which will start marking the territory and come back for the females.” This gradual process should make it easier for the females to familiarise themselves with the new environment once the males have explored it, she says.
The plan is to set up a “metapopulation”, a small community that survives through the addition of new individuals over time. Based on the amount of prey available, the project designers estimate that Kuno National Park should be able to host 21 cheetahs, or as many as 36 if officials succeed in restoring the park’s periphery. There are 169 villages in this area, presenting a high risk of conflict between cheetahs and humans.
But according to Ullas Karanth, a former director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s India programme, a viable population should have at least 50 wild cheetahs that are able to reproduce independently. A single cheetah needs a territory of at least 100 and up to 400 square kilometres; Karanth estimates that a population this size would require 10,000 to 15,000 square kilometres.
What’s more, these cats are an inherently fragile species. “Take a healthy tiger population: about 20 per cent of all tigers born make it to adulthood,” says Karanth. “In cheetahs, that proportion is just 5 per cent – most don’t make it.”
Even in the 19th century, when India wasn’t as densely populated as it is today, the records show a very thin cheetah population, says Karanth. Now, the cats are much more likely to cross paths with people, livestock and wild dogs that could harm or kill them.
Bettina Wachter, head of the Cheetah Research Project in Namibia, says that even if they were to have access to more prey, the cheetahs would still roam over large distances. Her research has shown that spread across the landscape at 23-kilometre intervals. Learning to avoid these hubs helped Namibian farmers minimise livestock losses.
“Think of it as cheetahs’ Facebook, where they go and exchange olfactory [scent] information, they spray urine or faeces and these are places where they always go back to,” says Wachter. They don’t change their roaming patterns based on the availability of prey, she says.
“I’m fascinated by the idea of bringing the cheetah back in a science-based manner, but ecologically, that’s a very tough goal,” says Karanth. Having invested 1.14 billion rupees ($14.3 million) in the project, India’s government will be under pressure to paint it as a success, he adds. “They will bring these cheetahs, show them around in zoos and build some tourism around them. It will not lead to a sustained, stable population of cheetahs that can live on its own.”
