Monday, September 19, 2022

Cheetahs return to India after 70-year absence


Sat, September 17, 2022


By Gloria Dickie and Tanvi Mehta

LONDON/NEW DELHI (Reuters) -Eight radio-collared African cheetahs step out on to the grassland of Kuno National Park in central India, their final destination after a 5,000-mile (8,000 km) journey from Namibia that has drawn criticism from some conservationists.

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 the first cat into the park on Saturday. It is the culmination of a 13-year effort to restore a species which vanished from India some 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 should do more to protect the country's own struggling wildlife.

The cheetahs - five females and three males - arrived after a two-day airplane and helicopter journey from the African savannah, and are expected to spend two to three months in a 6-square-km (2-square-mile) enclosure inside the park in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

If all goes well with their acclimation to Kuno, the cats will be released to run through 5,000 square km (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 gathers more funding for the 910 million rupee ($11.4 million) project, largely financed by the state-owned Indian Oil, it hopes to eventually grow the population to around 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 called the effort a "vanity project" that ignores the fact that the African cheetah — a subspecies similar but separate from the critically endangered Asiatic cheetah now only found in Iran — is not native to the Indian subcontinent.

And with India's 1.4 billion human population jockeying for land, biologists worry cheetahs won't have enough space to roam without being killed by predators or people.

India last year joined a U.N. pledge to conserve 30% of its land and ocean area by 2030, but today less than 6% of the country's territory is protected.

Bringing back the cheetah "is our endeavour towards environment and wildlife conservation," Modi said.

THE SPOTTED ONE

While cheetahs today are most often associated with Africa, the word "cheetah" comes from the Sanskrit word "chitraka", meaning "the spotted one".

At one point, the Asiatic cheetah ranged widely across North Africa, the Middle East and throughout India. During the Mughal Empire era, tamed cheetahs served as royal hunting companions, coursing after prey on behalf of their masters.

But hunters later turned their weapons on the cheetah itself. Today, just 12 remain in the arid regions of Iran.

Project Cheetah, begun in 2009 under former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government, appeared to offer India the chance to right a historic wrong and bolster its environmental reputation.

India's successes in managing the world's largest population of wild tigers proves it has the credentials to bring cheetahs back, said Yadav.

However, even between African countries, "there have been few (relocations) for cheetah into large or unfenced areas that have been successful," said Kim Young-Overton, cheetah program director at Panthera, a global wild cat conservation organization.

To set the cheetahs up for success, authorities are relocating villagers from Bagcha near Kuno. Officials have also been vaccinating domestic dogs in the area against diseases that could spread to the cats.

And wildlife officials have audited the park's prey, ensuring enough spotted deer, blue bulls, wild boars and porcupines to sustain the cheetahs' diet.

Indian Oil has pledged more than 500 million rupees ($6.3 million) for the project over the next five years.

CATS DOGGED BY CONTROVERSY

Some Indian scientists say modern India presents challenges not faced by the animals in the past.

A single cheetah needs a lot of space to roam. A 100 square km (38-square-mile) area can support six to 11 tigers, 10 to 40 lions, but only one cheetah.

Once the cheetahs move beyond Kuno's unfenced boundaries, "they'll be knocked out within six months by domestic dogs, by leopards," said wildlife biologist Ullas Karanth, director of the Centre for Wildlife Studies in Bengaluru.

"Or they'll kill a goat, and villagers will poison them" in response.

Poaching fears stymied another project that involved a 2013 Supreme Court order to move some of the world's last surviving Asiatic lions from their only reserve in the western Indian state of Gujarat to Kuno. Now, the cheetahs will take over that 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 eyeballing of the situation shows which species has to be the priority."

Other conservation experts say the promise of restoring cheetahs to 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 leading the Namibian side of the project.

Marker and her collaborators will help monitor the cats' settlement, hunting and reproduction in coming years.

Modi called for people to be patient as the cats adjust. "For them to be able to make Kuno National Park their home, we'll have to give these Cheetahs a few months' time."

(Reporting by Gloria Dickie in London and Tanvi Mehta in New Delhi; Editing by Katy Daigle, Mike Collett-White and Frank Jack Daniel)


Cheetahs make a comeback in India after 70 years







A cheetah is prepared for translocation at the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) in Otjiwarongo, Namibia, Friday, Sept. 16, 2022. The CCF will travel to India this week to deliver eight wild cheetahs to the Kuno National Park in India. 
(AP Photo/Dirk Heinrich)More


ANIRUDDHA GHOSAL and SIBI ARASU
Sat, September 17, 2022 a

NEW DELHI (AP) — Seven decades after cheetahs died out in India, they're back.

Eight big cats from Namibia made the long trek Saturday in a chartered cargo flight to the northern Indian city of Gwalior, part of an ambitious and hotly contested plan to reintroduce cheetahs to the South Asian country.

Then they were moved to their new home: a sprawling national park in the heart of India where scientists hope the world’s fastest land animal will roam again.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi released the cats into their enclosure Saturday morning. The cats emerged from their cage, tentatively at first while continuously scanning their new surroundings.

“When the cheetah will run again … grasslands will be restored, biodiversity will increase and eco-tourism will get a boost,” said Modi.

Cheetahs were once widespread in India and became extinct in 1952 from hunting and loss of habitat. They remain the first and only predator to die out since India’s independence in 1947. India hopes importing African cheetahs will aid efforts to conserve the country's threatened and largely neglected grasslands.

There are less than 7,000 adult cheetahs left in the wild globally, and they now inhabit less than 9% of their original range. Shrinking habitat, due to the increasing human population and climate change, is a huge threat and India's grasslands and forests could offer “appropriate” homes for the big cat, said Laurie Marker, of the Cheetah Conservation Fund, an advocacy and research group assisting in bringing the cats to India.

“To save cheetahs from extinction, we need to create permanent places for them on earth," she said.

Cheetah populations in most countries are declining. An exception to this is South Africa, where the cats have run out of space. Experts hope that Indian forests could offer these cats space to thrive. There are currently a dozen cheetahs in quarantine in South Africa, and they are expected to arrive at the Kuno National Park soon. Earlier this month, four cheetahs captured at reserves in South Africa were flown to Mozambique, where the cheetah population has drastically declined.

Some experts are more cautious.

There could be “cascading and unintended consequences” when a new animal is brought to the mix, said Mayukh Chatterjee of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

For example, a tiger population boom in India has led to more conflict with people sharing the same space. With cheetahs, there are questions about how their presence would affect other carnivores like striped hyenas, or even prey like birds.

“The question remains: How well it's done,” he said.

The initial eight cheetahs from Namibia will be quarantined at a facility in the national park and monitored for a month to make sure they're not carrying pests. Then they will be released into a larger enclosure in the park to help them get used to their new environment. The enclosures contain natural prey — such as spotted deer and antelope, which scientists hope they'll learn to hunt — and are designed to prevent other predators like bears or leopards from getting in.

The cheetahs will be fitted with tracking collars and released into the national park in about two months. Their movements will be tracked routinely, but for the most part, they'll be on their own.

The reserve is big enough to hold 21 cheetahs and if they were to establish territories and breed, they could spread to other interconnected grasslands and forests that can house another dozen cheetahs, according to scientists.

There is only one village with a few hundred families still residing on the fringes of the park. Indian officials said they'd be moved soon, and any livestock loss due to cheetahs will be compensated. The project is estimated to cost $11.5 million over five years, including $6.3 million that will be paid for by state-owned Indian Oil.

The continent-to-continent relocation has been decades in the making. The cats that originally roamed India were Asiatic cheetahs, genetically distinct cousins of those that live in Africa and whose range stretched to Saudi Arabia.

India had hoped to bring in Asiatic cheetahs, but only a few dozen of these survive in Iran and that population is too vulnerable to move.

Many obstacles remain, including the presence of other predators in India like leopards that may compete with cheetahs, said conservation geneticist Pamela Burger of University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna.

“It would be better to conserve them now where they are than to put effort in creating new sites where the outcome is questionable,” she said.

Dr. Adrian Tordiffe, a veterinary wildlife specialist from South Africa associated with the project, said the animals need a helping hand. He added that conservation efforts in many African countries hadn't been as successful, unlike in India where strict conservation laws have preserved big cat populations.

“We cannot sit back and hope that species like the cheetah will survive on their own without our help," he said.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Modi: India PM reintroduces extinct cheetahs on birthday

Sun, September 18, 2022

One of the cheetahs from Namibia released in a national park in India on Saturday

Cheetahs are set to roam in India for the first time since they were declared officially extinct in 1952.

A group of eight cats arrived from Namibia on the occasion of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's birthday on Saturday.

They will undergo a month-long quarantine before being released in a national park in central India.

Cheetahs formerly shared jungles with other big cats like lions and tigers but disappeared 70 years ago.

They are the world's fastest land animals, capable of reaching speeds of 70 miles (113km) an hour.

This is the first time a large carnivore is being moved from one continent to another and being reintroduced in the wild.

The cheetahs were released into the wild by PM Modi

At least 20 cheetahs are coming to India from South Africa and Namibia, home to more than a third of the world's 7,000 cheetahs.

The first batch of eight - five females and three males, aged between two and six years - arrived from Windhoek in Namibia to the Indian city of Gwalior on Saturday.

Wildlife experts, veterinary doctors and three biologists accompanied the animals as they made the transcontinental journey in a modified passenger Boeing 747 plane.

From Gwalior, the cheetahs were transferred by helicopter to Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh state, where they were released by a delegation led by Mr Modi.

The cheetahs made the transcontinental journey in a modified Boeing 747 passenger plane

Spread over a 289-square-mile area, the Kuno National Park is a sprawling sanctuary with prey like antelope and wild boars for the wild cats.

An electrified enclosure, with 10 compartments ranging in size, has been built for the animals to quarantine before being released in the wild.

Each cheetah will be given a dedicated team of volunteers, which will monitor it and keep tabs on the animal's movement. Satellite radio collars have been put on each cheetah for their geolocation updates.

The cheetahs were released in the Kuno National Park in central India

Experts say that a combination of hunting, habitat loss and food scarcity had led to the cheetah's disappearance in India.

Studies show that at least 200 cheetahs were killed in India, largely by sheep and goat herders, during the colonial period.

Some of them were eliminated through bounty hunting because the cats would enter villages and kill livestock. The cheetah is the only large mammal to become extinct in the country since its independence from British rule.

India has been making efforts to reintroduce cheetahs since the 1950s. An effort in the 1970s from Iran was unsuccessful after the Shah of Iran was deposed and the negotiations stopped.

Proponents of the project say that the reintroduction of cheetahs will build up local economies and help restore ecosystems that support the big cats.

Cheetahs are the world's fastest land animals, capable of reaching speeds of 70 miles (113km) an hour

But some worry that relocation of animals is always fraught with risks and releasing the cheetahs into a park might put them in harm's way.

Cheetahs are delicate animals who avoid conflict, and are targeted by competing predators. And the Kuno park has a sizeable leopard population which could kill cheetah cubs.

There is also a possibility that the cheetahs can stray outside the boundaries and get killed by people or other animals.

However, officials say the fears are unfounded as cheetahs are highly adaptable animals, and claim that the shortlisted site has been fully examined for habitat, prey and potential for man-animal conflict.

A combination of hunting, habitat loss and food scarcity led to the cheetah's disappearance in India

The first cheetah in the world to be bred in captivity was in India during the rule of Mughal emperor Jahangir.

His father, Akbar, recorded that there were 10,000 cheetahs during his time. He reigned from 1556 to 1605.

Much later, research suggested the number of cheetahs had dropped to a couple of hundred by the 19th Century - and the cat was reportedly sighted for the last time in India 70 years ago.



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