India’s programme to return cheetahs to the country is “flourishing”, but a mounting opposition to “Project Cheetah” from local farmers has “teeth”, according to The Times.
The big cats were declared extinct in India 70 years ago because of habitat loss, prey reduction and “rampant Raj-era poaching for luxury fashion”, but now they are back – and causing plenty of division.
India’s links with the “world’s fastest land animal date back centuries”, and the word cheetah itself comes from Sanskrit citra, meaning spotted. Royals “kept them as pets” and in the 12th century they became a “popular hunting animal”, with the Mughal emperor Akbar believed to have collected some 9,000 of them.
Legend has it that the last three cheetahs in India were shot dead by the Maharajah of the historical state of Koriya on a nighttime drive in 1947.
Then, in 2022, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched an ambitious scheme that aimed to re-establish the cheetah within its historical territory in the central state of Madhya Pradesh.
Reintroducing a cheetah population initially relied upon the importation of cheetahs from countries like South Africa, Namibia and Botswana. But the project has had its “hiccups”, said The Times. Several cheetahs went into septic shock and died during a monsoon. Others perished from climate stress and parasitic infections as a result of their transition from Africa’s savannahs to India’s “scrub forest ecosystems”.
Some scientists are also opposed to the program: conservationists have called for a ban on importing cheetahs, demanding that the most recent batch should be the last, citing an “abysmal lack of habitat and prey”, said The Hindu. |
