The idea to bring African cheetahs into India is an ill-advised conservation initiative, according to eight wildlife specialists, who warned on October 19 that the assertion that the nation has enough room for cheetahs is unsubstantiated.
According to the experts, India’s plan for reintroducing cheetahs has taken a speculative and unscientific approach, which they predict would result in confrontations between people and cheetahs or the deaths of the introduced cheetahs and weaken scientifically based species recovery efforts.
Last month, five female and three male cheetahs from Namibia were released in Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park. According to Indian wildlife officials, Kuno is a perfect location for restoring the cheetah, the only large carnivore that has disappeared from India since Independence, because it contains an abundance of food, including chital, antelope, chinkara, boar, nilgai, rhesus macaques, and grey langurs.
However, the eight experts are concerned that the reintroduction plan has made incorrect assumptions regarding Kuno’s cheetah-carrying capacity and overlooked important scientific insights into how much room-free-ranging cheetahs require.
According to studies of populations of free-ranging cheetahs in eastern Africa, one cheetah would require at least 100 square kilometers. The estimated carrying capacity of three cheetahs per 100 square kilometers for Kuno was based on an outdated density estimate from Namibia.
Gopalaswamy is the principal author of a letter that was published on October 19 in the scientific journal Nature Ecology and Evolution. The letter expresses concerns about the cheetah reintroduction plan and calls on wildlife authorities to update the plan in accordance with scientific principles.
According to the experts, neither Kuno, which is about 748 sq km, unfenced, and home to roughly 500 feral cattle and 169 human settlements, nor any of the other landscapes under consideration are large enough or of high enough quality to support self-sustaining and healthy cheetah populations.
The eight Namibian cheetahs are being kept in a gated area right now, but they will eventually be released to roam Kuno and hunt for prey. However, it’s conceivable that the cheetahs will venture outside the park’s boundaries and come across both people and livestock.
The reintroduction plan developed by the Union Environment Ministry and overseen by the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, a government research institute, ignored the results of studies on the amount of space that free-ranging cheetahs need, according to the scientists.
The reintroduction strategy needs to be drastically revised in order to account for the real carrying capacity of the accessible spaces and be preceded by actions to protect India’s grasslands and adequate natural prey for cheetahs.
Leili Kalatbari from Portugal, Gus Mills from South Africa, David Thuo from Australia, and Femke Broekhuis from the Netherlands are the other co-authors of the letter.
News Mania Desk
