Reintroducing cheetahs can lead to the conservation of India’s grasslands and livestock.
File image of a cheetah brought from South Africa being released in an enclosure at Palpur, Kuno National Park. (Credit: PTI)
“How long does a species have to live in a country before it ceases to be alien? Should alien or native be just by point of origin or by the way that it blends into the larger fabric?”
The questions are not about migrating humans, but about a large cat, the cheetah, which was reintroduced in India last year. Twenty cheetahs from Namibia and South Africa have been settled in Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park. Since then, experts have been raising questions about the intercontinental transfer of a foreign species.
“India has many species which did not evolve in what is today’s India, but in undivided India, the Indian subcontinent,” said Mahesh Rangarajan, historian specialising in environment studies and former director of Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, at the launch of the book The Story of India’s Cheetahs by Divyabhanusinh, former president of WWF for Nature, India. The discussion assumed greater significance in light of the two cheetahs’ death. One of them died in April and the other in March. Meanwhile, four cheetah cubs were also born at the national park.
An updated edition of the 1995 title by Divyabhanusinh, the book chronicles the cheetah’s journey in the Indian sub-continent, drawing from references in Sanskrit, Pali, Urdu, Farsi, Arabic, Greek, and even Latin. In the undivided India, the cheetah range was from Balochistan to Burma, now Myanmar. The author stated that the last sighting of the animal in the Indian sub-continent was in 1997, and cheetah skin was found around the same time in Pakistan.
Divyabhanusinh, who is also a member of the government’s Cheetah Task Force for the animal’s reintroduction, mentions in his book how import of the big feline in India is not happening for the first time: “Cheetahs were kept in captivity for hunting by many Indian princes. By 1927, import of cheetahs from Africa for hunting purposes was an established practice.”
The author was joyous about the current initiative as he said, “It is a very small, very minor beginning of a much larger project.”
Drawing parallels with the efforts to save various species in the country, he said, “It has taken 150 years for the Gir lion’s population to reach around 600. In 1952, the rhinos were practically extinct in Assam. Now, 70 years later, we have 4,000 rhinos. In 1972, when Project Tiger was launched, there were around 1,800 tigers. It has taken 50 years to bring back the tiger population,” he said.
“As has happened with several iconic species conservation projects, the experts were unanimous in their belief that cheetah introduction can lead to the conservation of its prey species and their habitats, India’s grasslands and other landscapes.
“Our grassland forests are the most productive ecosystems in the world. It must be saved with some kind of icon. We have the largest livestock population in the world,” said MK Ranjitsinh, the architect of India’s Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972, who later spearheaded the cheetah introduction programme. He ended on a warning note against the ongoing fragmentation of habitat in the name of infrastructure projects prioritising human development. “In India, we do not worship a khandit murti (damaged murti). What about those who khandit karo (destroy) the creation of god, the temples of gods, the forests and wildlife and, of late, the national parks of India?”
(This story first appeared on news9live.com on May 06, 2023 and can be read here.)
