How cheetahs went extinct in India, and how they are being brought back

This is the first time in the world that a large carnivore will be relocated from one continent to another.

How did cheetahs go extinct in India?

The cheetah has an ancient history in the country, with a Neolithic cave painting of a ‘slender spotted feline being hunted’ having been found at Chaturbunj Nala in Mandasur, Madhya Pradesh. The name ‘cheetah’ is believed to have originated from Sanskrit word chitrak, which means ‘the spotted one’.

In India, the cheetah population used to be fairly widespread. The animal was found from Jaipur and Lucknow in the north to Mysore in the south, and from Kathiawar in the west to Deogarh in the east.

The cheetah is believed to have disappeared from the Indian landscape in 1947 when Maharaja Ramanuj Pratap Singh Deo of Koriya princely state hunted down and shot the last three recorded Asiatic cheetahs in India. The cheetah was officially declared extinct by the Indian government in 1952.

While over-hunting was a major contributing factor for the cheetah’s extinction, the decimation of its relatively narrow prey base species and the loss of its grassland-forest habitat also played a role. During the decades preceding independence, as well as those after, India’s emphasis on agriculture – which included acquiring and parcelling off grassland – led to a decline in the cheetah’s habitat.

Since the 1940s, the cheetah has gone extinct in 14 other countries – Jordan, Iraq, Israel, Morocco, Syria, Oman, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Ghana, Nigeria, Kazakhstan, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Why is the cheetah being brought back?

The aim behind the translocation is not only to restore India’s ‘historic evolutionary balance’, but also to develop a cheetah ‘metapopulation’ that will help in the global conservation of the animal.

As it is a flagship species, the conservation of the cheetah will revive grassland-forests and its biome and habitat, much like Project Tiger has done for forests and all the species found in these forests. Project Tiger has also resulted in the conservation of 250 water bodies found in India’s 52 Tiger Reserves. The Cheetah Project is likely to have a similar impact.

The translocation project has also helped conservation efforts in Africa, in particular South Africa. The South African cheetah population had dwindled two decades ago, before the conservation programme ensured that the numbers increased – of the global cheetah population of 7,000, 4,500 belong to South Africa.

The cheetah is believed to have originated in South Africa and spread across the world through land connectivity. In the Kalahari, the cheetah was once critically endangered due to poaching and hunting. But now, with healthy female cheetahs producing five to six cubs each, South Africa is rapidly running out of space for its cheetah population.

South African Veterinary Wildlife Specialist Professor Adrian Tordiffe of the University of Pretoria, which is partnered with the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and with India’s National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and is the South African government’s representative in the Cheetah Project, said there are no new reserves in South Africa where the cheetahs can be kept. The cheetahs in South Africa are largely kept in privately-owned fenced reserves.

“With a genetically healthy population, the numbers are growing even within these comparatively small private reserves. If this continues, the cheetahs will decimate the prey in these areas. We may need to start using contraceptives on cheetahs to control the population. This will be very unfortunate as once contraception is used, there is no guarantee that the female cheetah will regain fertility once the effect of the contraceptive wears off. We need to look at cheetahs as a global population, a metapopulation, instead of breaking them into fragments of small species, which I think is a terrible idea. Especially in the case of cheetahs where the genetic difference between the African and Indian cheetahs is so small, and the ecological functions are practically the same,’’ Professor Tordiff told The Indian Express.

A cheetah inside a transport cage at the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia’s Otjiwarongo on Friday. (AP Photo)

Have there been earlier attempts to bring back the cheetah?

While attempts to relocate cheetahs to India began in 2009, it was only in 2020 that the Supreme Court of India finally gave the green signal for such efforts.

An expert committee set up by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, under the chairmanship of Wildlife Trust of India board member and former director, Wildlife, of the Indian Government, Dr M K Ranjitsinh, along with members of the Wildlife Institute of India, World Wide Fund, NTCA and officials from the Centre and states, have completed an assessment of the sites to which the cheetah can be relocated.

India’s first attempt to bring back the cheetah was in the early 1970s. Dr Ranjitsinh was tasked with carrying out negotiations with Iran on behalf of the Indira Gandhi government.

“Indira Gandhi was very keen on bringing back the cheetah. The negotiations went well and Iran had promised us the cheetah. But our potential release sites needed to be upgraded with an increase in prey base and greater protection. Moreover, during the process, Emergency was declared in the country and soon after, the regime of the Shah of Iran fell,’’ said Dr Ranjitsinh.

While the Persian Cheetah was preferred for relocation, as it was Asiatic, this is no longer possible as the cheetah population in Iran has dwindled to under 50.

How was Kuno National Park chosen for the translocation?

Six sites, which had been previously assessed in 2010 for the translocation of the Asiatic Lion, were re-assessed by WII in 2020 – Mukundara Hills Tiger Reserve and Shergarh Wildlife Sanctuary, both in Rajasthan, and Gandhi Sagar Wildlife Sanctuary, Kuno National Park, Madhav National Park and Nauradehi Wildlife Sanctuary, which are in Madhya Pradesh.

Of these six sites, Kuno, which had been monitored since 2006, was found to be ready to receive the cheetah immediately, as it had already been prepared for the Asiatic Lion. Both animals share the same habitat – semi-arid grasslands and forests that stretch across Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.

The upgradation of sites required investment on a large scale in terms of reducing anthropogenic pressures through relocation of villages, mitigating infrastructure (roadways and railway) and prey augmentation for the cheetah through translocation of blackbuck, chital, chinkara and wild boar, among other animals.

In Kuno National Park, because of the lion relocation project, the Madhya Pradesh Forest Department had already relocated 24 of the 25 villages and declared it a national park, which led to “remarkable recovery in its habitat, prey abundance and reduction of human impact”, according to the assessment carried out by WII in 2020.

Only one village – Bagcha, with a population of 148 – remains on the fringes of the forest.

A tracking device is fitted onto a cheetah’s neck by manager of the Cheetah Metapopulation Initiative, Vincent van Der Merwe, second from left, at a reserve near Bella Bella, South Africa, Sunday, Sept. 4, 2022. South African wildlife officials have sent four cheetahs to Mozambique this week as part of efforts to reintroduce the species to neighboring parts of southern Africa. (AP/PTI Photo)

While Kuno itself has a healthy prey base (with chital, sambhal, neel gai, wild pig, gazelle, langur, peafowl), 700 more such herbivores have also been introduced to the area, said Forest Ministry officials.

In Sheopur district, where Kuno is located, rainfall levels, temperatures, altitude, and conditions are similar to conditions in both South Africa and Namibia. The park spans an area of 740 square km and is a part of the Kuno Wildlife Division, which has an area of 1235 square km, and has a healthy population of chital, sambar, nilgai, wild pig, chinkara and cattle. The leopard and striped hyena are currently the only larger carnivores within the national park, the single lone tiger having returned to Ranthambore in 2019-20.

The south-eastern portion of this area is patchily connected to the Panna-Tiger Reserve through the Madhav National Park-Shivpuri Forest Division. The Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan across the Chambal river is connected on the north-western side.

How are the cheetahs being translocated?

For the past month, both the Namibian and the South African cheetahs have been quarantined in ‘Bomas’, a smaller fenced camp in which animals are kept temporarily for treatment or quarantine.

Extensive health checks-ups have been carried out for detection of diseases and vaccination has been completed. The cheetahs have also been radio collared.

Officials said the Namibian cheetahs, which will begin their journey soon, will not be tranquilised for the journey. They will be fed before they embark on the journey, and will be accompanied in the aircraft by a team of three veterinarians – an Indian, a Namibian and a South African – who have been tasked with looking after them. The cheetahs will be transported in cages, in keeping with international specifications, of 114cm x 118cm x 84cm dimensions.

They will board a chartered Boeing 747 cargo flight from the Namibian capital of Windhoek on September 16, and make their 10-hour-long journey to the Jaipur airport, arriving on the morning of September 17. From Jaipur, they will be airlifted in helicopters and begin the final 42-minute flight to Kuno National Park, where a temporary helipad has been constructed to receive the animals.

The cheetahs will first be released into a quarantine enclosure of 1500 square metres, where they will be kept in nine compartments for a one-month period to not only ensure their adaptation to the new environment, but also to check if they are carrying parasitic loads or diseases from the African continent. After being monitored closely for 30 days, they will be released into a bigger enclosure of 6 square km for the period that it takes them to adapt.

In this bigger enclosure, where they will have prey and be able to hunt, they will be monitored closely to keep a check on their health, overall adaptation to Kuno and hunting patterns, among other factors. Once the cheetah is found to have acclimatised, they will be released into the Kuno National Park.

According to Member-Secretary of the National Tiger Conservation Authority, S P Yadav, historically, the cheetah has not been known to attack humans, and therefore animal-human conflict is not anticipated. They have, however, been known to attack livestock, so local villagers have been apprised and ‘cheetah-mitras’ appointed to keep a watch on the animals.

Cattle and feral dogs in the area have been vaccinated, Yadav said. The Madhya Pradesh government has also put in place ‘adequate compensation’ for any possible conflict between cheetahs and villagers.

Several leopards usually found in the area of the cheetah’s enclosure have also been removed, as they can be potential threats while the animal is acclimatising.

Over the past year, expert teams from both Namibia and South Africa have visited Kuno to oversee the arrangements, including to train Indian forest officers and wildlife experts on the handling, breeding, rehabilitation, medical treatment and conservation of cheetahs.

Why are there concerns about the gene flow of cheetahs?

Critics of the project have pointed out that the gene flow in such a small group of cheetahs is a matter of concern. Gene flow between populations can help maintain genetic diversity and prevent inbreeding, which is especially important for small and fragmented habitats.

Addressing concerns of gene flow in such a small group of cheetahs, Prof Tordiffe said that South Africa has already undertaken similar projects within the continent, in which measures are taken to ensure gene flow.

“The problem of gene flow is one that we face in South Africa with our own cheetah population. Most of the cheetahs are found in small privately-owned reserves which are not close to each other and therefore not connected. But under our Cheetah Metapopulation programme, we are constantly moving the cheetahs around to ensure healthy gene flow. We have been doing this for the past 10 years, between the 50 reserves that are a part of the programme,’’said Prof Tordiffe.

South Africa also carries out a similar programme with Malawi and Mozambique. “For example, the cheetah had gone extinct in Malawi, so it was a completely new re-introduction. We are moving cheetahs from South Africa to Malawi, and then back to South Africa. These are then exchanged with new blood from the South African side… we have been monitoring the genetic variations which take place,’’ said Prof Tordiffe.

He added, “This population size (of the cheetah) will not be limited to this first batch. Over the next five to 10 years, 5-10 cheetahs will be relocated to India annually. We anticipate that from time to time, we will be bringing back some of these cheetahs from India, and taking some others there.”

Ministry officials, meanwhile, pointed out that even if this movement does not take place, gene flow is unlikely to be a problem in India because of the country’s animal corridors that allow animals to move around.

What are the future plans to increase cheetah population in India?

Over the coming 15 years, the Indian government will acquire two to four cheetahs from Africa, with the process undertaken at an interval of one to four years, to establish a breeding cheetah metapopulation of 35-40 in the country.

Once the population in Kuno National Park has adapted and is flourishing, the Indian government will expand the efforts to reserves in other parts of the country as well.

Yadav pointed out that the cheetah can also live in a wide range of habitats, which includes the most prominent semi-arid grassland, but also coastal scrubs, wooded savannah, Montane habitat, snow deserts and rugged semi-arid areas.