Cheetah deaths, a wake-up call for govt

Subhasish Mitra (Wide Angle)

The deaths of cheetahs are indeed a wake-up call for the Government which must heed to concerns raised by South African and Namibian scientists.

 

The cheetah casualty count at Kuno National Park has gone up to nine. Six of the dead animals had been relocated to the protected area in Madhya Pradesh from Namibia and South Africa in an ambitious programme that began in September last year. The park has also lost three cheetah cubs.

 

The re-introduction of the big cat is a long-term project and 11 months is too early to pass judgment on Project Cheetah. The high mortality rate of the animal in its new home is, however, worrying. More so, because South African cheetah specialists — they were roped into the steering committee of the translocation programme — have raised serious concerns about the project’s implementation in a letter to the Supreme Court.

 

A report has revealed that in the letter, dated July 15, the wildlife biologists accused the government of keeping them in the dark about the health of the animals. The government’s claim that the scientists have since dissociated themselves from the letter doesn’t appear convincing, given that the fledgling project has invited allegations of giving short shrift to expert opinion from other quarters as well.

 

Cheetahs were officially declared extinct in India in 1952. In the 1970s the Indira Gandhi government opened negotiations with Iran for bringing Persian cheetahs to India in exchange for Asiatic lions. But the move could not take off. The relocation project was revived in 2009 by the UPA government, only to be nipped in the bud by the SC which reasoned “that a detailed scientific study should be conducted before the introduction of a foreign species”.

 

In 2020, the apex court modified its order and allowed the government to commence Project Cheetah on a trial basis, reiterating that the endeavour should be moored in “scientific understanding”.

 

However, it appears that the government has not always given due importance to this guideline. In October last year, this paper reported that wildlife biologist YV Jhala, at the forefront of the cheetah project for more than a decade, and who escorted the first batch of the animals from Namibia, did not find a place in the government’s new Cheetah Task Force.

 

South African scientists have alleged that the programme’s current management has “little or no scientific training” and foreign experts “have become mere window dressing”. They have claimed that some of the deaths could have been prevented with “more appropriate veterinary care”.

 

Less than a week after the wildlife biologists expressed their worries, the SC admonished the government and said that a 40 per cent fatality in less than a year “does not reflect a good picture”. 

 

International experts involved in Project Cheetah have told the government based on lessons learnt from the initial experience in Madhya Pradesh's Kuno National Park that younger cheetahs are more adaptable to their new environments and have higher survival rates compared to older cheetahs.

 

Besides, younger males display "lower aggression" towards other cheetahs, reducing the risk of intraspecific competition mortality, commonly known as cheetah infighting. Six of the 20 adult cheetahs relocated to Kuno from Africa have died since March this year.

 

They emphasised that the relocation of at least 50 more founder cheetahs from the South African meta-population over the next decade will be crucial for stabilising the Indian population.