African Cheetahs Wander India’s Landscape
Exactly 70 years after being declared extinct in India, cheetahs have been reintroduced.
Although the cheetah derives its name from the Hindi word Chita (spotted one,) the animal was hunted for sport during the British occupation of India and died out in the early 1950s. The reintroduction will now be done using a sub-species from southern Africa.
The move is widely popular, as cheetahs can be found in ancient religious texts dating back thousands of years. Many locals to the areas where they are being brought back welcome the move.
This is important as one of the greatest risks to rewilding projects in India has been how large predators are integrated into areas already populated with tribes of people. Human-wildlife conflict arises when local communities are forced to relocate, or when predators attack livestock is a major risk to rewilding projects which will hopefully be dulled when reintroducing cheetahs compared to species such as tigers.
However, not everyone is convinced. Rewilding of tigers has seen a lot of success over the last few decades, but most of the challenges faced when protecting new species in a habitat will likely remain present with this new project.
Pakhi Das, a wildlife conservation researcher and policy analyst said: “Taxpayer’s money is being spent to bring cheetahs into a state that’s lost over 110,000 acres of forest land in the last 10 years to various development activities.
“As we speak, there are 565 proposals in the pipeline seeking approvals for diverting a total of 48,693 acres of Madhya Pradesh’s forest.”
The central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh is now home to eight cheetahs. They share this space with tigers and other protected species. This state was chosen despite it recording the highest number of tiger deaths this year (27) of any of India’s 21 states where tiger reserves exist.
Ms Das said: “Bringing in new animals in an increasingly disturbed landscape does not seem like good conservation practice to me, nor does forceful eviction of local communities to relocate wildlife from another continent.
“The government argues that bringing cheetahs would help in conservation of other species including the grasslands in the landscape. I personally find it particularly ironic since grasslands are categorised as “wastelands” in India due to their seemingly lifeless appearance.
“I’ve worked on projects trying to secure grasslands for the survival of snow leopards in the western Himalayas. They weren’t easy projects, especially since we were trying to conserve what was already labelled wasteland. I can’t imagine cheetah’s grasslands will be seen as more valuable than the snow leopard’s.
“I also don’t understand why the tiger wasn’t enough to help conserve other species. What difference would cheetahs do that tigers didn’t?”
The introduction of cheetahs has proven so popular among the general population that the date chosen for them to land coincides with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s birthday. Seemingly a vanity present to himself.
Ms Das said: “I would love for India to have all the wildlife of the world. But I know for a fact, a few years down the line, me or someone like me will be summarising reports listing reasons for cheetah mortality on roads and highways in Madhya Pradesh or writing case briefs to prevent the diversion of cheetah’s habitat for a railway transmission line or mining exploration project.
“Unless we have a strong system in place to really check what the country’s priorities are, bringing more wildlife only to have them crushed under trucks and trains is just heart-breaking.”