[vj_torqueaddict]

I could not find a thread related to this, hence creating one. Mods feel free to delete it if not relevant.

I was looking forward for this day from many years. It was known among wildlife enthusiast circle about this project. Cheetahs are being reintroduced into India after they were announced extinct some 70 years ago. This project was on hold due to COVID for two years. Finally the day has come!

Kuno national park has been selected as their habitat after careful consideration. There are some wildlifers who believe this isn't suitable,only time will tell. I personally hope they thrive and our grandkid generation enjoy the full glory of Cheetahs!

More details here : https://indianexpress.com/article/in...-park-8155880/

[V.Narayan]

https://www.firstpost.com/explainers...-11245111.html

They arrived in a customized Boeing 747 where the 8 cheetahs, sedated, travelled in special crates where the economy section usually is. The vets and support staff sat in the front. A really big project and rather specialized. Kudos to the Govt for getting this done.

Cheetahs were eliminated from India by Rajas and colonial rulers and other VIPs who shot them as part of their big game fun. The cheetahs were such a favourite of even the Mughals for both hunting and using as a trained domesticated hunter that by 1900 there were only a few thousand left where once tens of thousands roamed all over the Indian sub-continent. By 1952 they were declared officially extinct in India.

The Cheetah is the 6th largest of the big cats after the Royal Bengal Tiger, the Lion, and types of Leopards.

I hope this infusion is a success. It is estimated that 5 to 10 fresh animals will have to be infused each year for about 8 to 10 years to build up the breed and DNA stock

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Posing below, one Maharaja Ramanuja Pratap Singh Deo, shot the last 3 known Cheetahs in India in 1948 in what is today Madhya Pradesh. Needless to say infamous immortality is assured for this worthy.


The Cheetahs being released in India after quarantine and a recovery period.
They were flown to their jungle pen by Boeing Chinook helicopter.

[Shreyans_Jain]

The environment in MP is vastly different from Namibia, with an exponentially higher population density and a far greater chance of animal-human conflict. Namibia is essentially empty beyond the capital city of Windhoek. In contrast, all of our national parks and reserve forests have villages in them, and roads going through them. Weather will be different. The prey will also be very different - no zebras, wildebeest etc, and much smaller kinds of deer. It is also likely that these new cheetahs will become the subject of crass VIP tourism.

Hoping against hope that this project succeeds and does not become another typical exercise of vanity and political oneupmanship.

[dailydriver]

Next only to the difficulties in recognising the umpteen number of models of Bajaj Discover series are the troubles I face in the nomenclature of the various species of this wild cat!!!

Leopard, Cheetah and Jaguar appear the same to my untrained eyes and rather dull brain. The Snow Leopard and Black Panther are of course easily discernable.

Now, on the issue at hand, translocating a species to areas where it has a fair chance of survival and procreation is good and desirable. However, there is always the danger of upsetting an ecosystem that has been shaped by nature for three quarters of a century. That ecosystem, having got used to the absence of this ace predator, might identify the new introduction as an impediment, or worse, a danger.

India has been successful in reviving the declining fortunes of another sub species of cat, through the widespread implementation of Project Tiger. Can the success be replicated in case of the Cheetah is a question that can only be answered in time.

My only wish, as a responsible citizen and as a resident of an area that lies in close proximity to Western Ghats, is that the reintroduction of Cheetahs shouldn't end up in Animal-Human conflicts.

Of late, we are seeing an increasing number of Leopards venturing into villages and towns in search of food. Every time there is a sighting, cries of finishing off the animal to protect the people reach a crescendo. Just last month, a princely sum of 75lakhs were spent in a vain attempt to capture Leopards in Belgavi; schools and colleges were closed for nearly thirty days!

In the instant case, the eight animals are being used as political pawns both by the ruling and opposition sides. Hope this trivialisation will not hinder the resettlement of Cheetahs in their newly found homes.

[CarNerd]

What exactly is the point of this? There are many endangered birds & animals that exist in India, never heard of any steps to save them. What about the risks involved like diseases and other wild animals? What about the space available compared to vast African lands? According to this article, India's forest cover is actually decreasing:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/frontli...83909.ece/amp/

And 30% of India's geographical land is under degradation:


In my opinion, saving forests is more important than importing Cheetahs.

[vj_torqueaddict]

Originally Posted by CarNerd

In my opinion, saving forests is more important than importing Cheetahs.

Very true. However , one major incentive for saving forests is protecting the species first. For example, Tiger reserves. Once a forest is declared tiger reserve, the forest automatically thrives. It gets huge funding and increases eco tourism. Without exotic species , there is no incentive to protect the forests. Definitely there are many other exotic ones going extinct which needs attention. Like great Indian Bustard. Alas! Sometimes we have to use common connect like Tigers , leopards and Cheetahs. But I absolutely understand where you are coming from. Let's hope this initiative protects our forests in return.

[dragracer567]

Being a marine biologist, I am not competent to comment on terrestrial ecology but I am going to anyway.

The species that was originally found in India was the Asiatic Cheetah - the Acinonyx jubatus venaticus while the one being introduced in India is most likely the Acinonyx jubatus jubatus. Those familiar with scientific names would recognize that both these Cheetahs are actually from the same species but from different sub-species. Infact, the subspecies that is currently being introduced in India are apparently the closest genetically to the Asiatic Cheetah. The Asiatic Cheetah is currently found only in Iran and interestingly, there were plans in the 70s to bring some from Iran but that got torpedoed thanks to the Iranian Revolution. The Cheetah has been a part and parcel of the ecosystem in various parts of India with the count by the Mughals during the Akbar era amounting to more than 10,000. Such apex predators are crucial in any ecosystem as they keep lower carnivores and herbivores in check. Infact, the removal of these apex predators is even worse for animal-human conflict as the herbivores can destroy crops and become pests.

It is really hard to say what would be the impact of reintroducing these Cheetahs after 70 years because we don't know what kind of impact studies were done. According to the media, forage shouldn't be a problem since wild boars are plenty in the area. However, the biggest worry for the Cheetah isn't conflict with human settlements (given their known behavior) but rather competition with leopards. Cheetahs are apparently very shy animals and they don't do very well when competing with other big cats, infact, their only advantage is their speed! So, there are worries that the Cheetah cubs could get hunted by the leopards.

A similar precedent is the reintroduction of wolves to the Yellowstone national park in 1995 after 65 years and this has generally been considered beneficial to the local ecology. There are also similar plans to reintroduce wolves in Europe, especially in the UK where wolves have been extinct for almost 500 years! Now, unlike the wolf scenario, there are very similar apex predators in the habitat where the Cheetah has been released - the Leopard, so I'm not sure what niche the Cheetah will fit in. We can't know if this exercise actually makes sense till we have a publicly peer-reviewed study and that's probably a decade down the line.

[deathwalkr]

So we have Lions, Tigers, Leopards and now Cheetahs as well. I really really hope and pray that the project takes off and Cheetahs thrive in our country once again.

It is an extremely uphill task but one can and one must hope that they adapt and thrive.

[Ragul]

Where are the vast plains for the Cheetas to run and Thrive exactly? Without being massacred by leopards within a few years of introduction.

[searacer932]

This is an outstanding initiative by the Government of India! I wish this exercise all the success and best of luck!

Hopefully the Cheetahs get a thriving environment to settle in.

[deetee]

Correct me if am wrong, Cheetahs are not known to hunt humans. They are less powerful than leopards and as such I don't think their introduction will lead to human-animal conflict. Leopards are the most opportunistic human hunters among cat family but chetaahs are lot more different. As someone else pointed previously, along with possible pouching , cheetahs have to survive attacks from other predators like hyenas, wild dogs and even leopards. As good a intiative as this is, it's success depends on continous monitoring of these rookies and their interaction with new ecosystem.

[V.Narayan]

https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/vide...-india-3353581

The link above has a short video on the plane ride of the Cheetahs with some dry humour.

While some members have expressed doubts about the possible success of this initiative I am confident it will do well. The Indian Forest Service has its good points and successfully implemented Project Tiger from 1973 onwards with significant success despite the odds. Project Tiger too in the 1970s was met with the usual pessimism so characteristic of us. I am sure a appropriate home work was done before importing these handsome animals. I wonder if the lion can be imported from Africa to improve the gene pool of the Gir lions and help increase their numbers from the present population of 674. Can the biologists amongst us opine on this.

Interestingly the grand daughter of Maharaja Ramanuja Pratap Singh Deo {photo in post #2} is in the press claiming that her grand father only hunted man eaters to save the villagers. And that her grandfather installed telephone lines in remote villages so that he could be informed about man eaters in the vicinity. So the villagers in the 1940s of what is today Chattisgarh did not have piped drinking water or roads but phones got installed!???! Sounds like horse manure to me because Cheetahs are not known to become man eaters!.

Other than the GoI we also need to thank the Govt of Namibia for this import. Haven't seen one news article in the Indian press expressing our gratitude to the Govt of Namibia.

[RashmiRathi]

Dear All,

I read a lot on Shikar literature starting from Jim Corbett moving on to Kenneth Anderson then old Raj stories by various English big game hunters.
I was intrigued by the absence of any reference to Lions and Cheetah in Shikar literature. After reading so many books and stories, I couldn't find a single story of hunt related to wild lion or cheetah in India.

Around 10 years ago, I came accross a book whose basic premise was lions and cheetahs are not indigenous to India but they were exported from Africa for various menageries of Indian kingdoms. Some of them escaped their enclosures and turned feral but they were always limited to very small geographical regions.

That kinds of explain the whole reason why we don't see any cheetah or lion hunt stories in Indian Shikar literature.

I am not a historian or wild life expert but this is my two cents for this forum.

Look forward to hear from some wildlife experts in this group.

[deetee]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Interestingly the grand daughter of Maharaja Ramanuja Pratap Singh Deo {photo in post #2} is in the press claiming that her grand father only hunted man eaters to save the villagers. And that her grandfather installed telephone lines in remote villages so that he could be informed about man eaters in the vicinity. So the villagers in the 1940s of what is today Chattisgarh did not have piped drinking water or roads but phones got installed!???! Sounds like horse manure to me because Cheetahs are not known to become man eaters!.

That it is. She seems to want to gain some press fame and add some brownie points to family name, with claims which can't be verified after so long. Cheetahs are very vulnerable among the cat family predators. They neither are as wicked as Leopard/wildcats nor powerful as Lions that can dominate grasslands. Hunting Cheetahs was no brave act even by standards of 1940's. This Maharaja must have been desparate then to show off and has taken the life of the last cheetahs to that end.


Talking about the success of this project, I think this will not be anything like Project Tiger. One reason being the context - back in 70's the overall predatory density in India would have been low due to extensive poaching and hunting in the prior decades. As such, the remaining predators will have lot more area to exert their dominance and more prey per predator. But now the context is different, there are decent numbers of Tigers compared to then, and in each Tiger's beat, there may be one or more leopards doing their own stealthy hunting. And not to mention the increased numbers of other smaller predators. Landing in middle of this stiff competition for dominion and food, Cheetahs will have a tough time to adjust to new climate and food chain hierarchy.


The other reason being the animal itself - Cheetahs are neither powerful as Tigers nor cunning as the Leopard . They rely on their speed primarily and even with that speed very few hunts are successful (all that even when the prey is abundant). So, improving their numbers require much smarter strategy and hardwork from the Forest department (and ofcourse cooperation from the residents of the National parks).


I sincerely hope and pray that, against all odds, this beautiful athletic predator multiplies and flourishes in our jungles.

[Sree]

After 75 Years, Cheetahs Return to India in a Grand Experiment https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/16/w...A8WQQFMy-eN4TQ



An unbiased article. Gives me hope