The world’s first intercontinental cheetah-introduction programme hit a setback last month when it emerged that three relocated animals, and three of their cubs, had died in the space of eight months.
Credit: Press Information Bureau/PIB Photo/Alamy
A goal of Project Cheetah is to help conserve the vulnerable South African cheetah . Only 6,517 cheetahs remain in the wild, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Cheetah populations have rebounded in semi-managed reserves in South Africa , but conservationists say there is not enough safe, wild habitat there for them to expand into. The India project is an attempt to solve this problem.
The Madhya Pradesh forest department, which manages Kuno and is implementing Project Cheetah, said the cubs died of malnutrition and weakness.Wachter and other scientists worry that Project Cheetah was drawn up hastily, without enough preparation. Only nine months elapsed between the release of the action plan and the first animals being moved to India.
“But there is really no evidence anywhere in the world that cheetahs squeeze together when there is more prey,” Wachter says. “In the Serengeti in Tanzania, there is a lot of prey. They could come closer to each other, but they don’t.” Tordiffe points out a lack of data on cheetahs in India. “Trying to decide how many cheetahs Kuno National Park can accommodate cannot be determined by any expert,” he says. “They are basing these estimates on other systems — ones that do not exist in India at the moment.”
The action plan originally suggested that the animals would be restricted to the park, but Gopal says the project is preparing for roaming animals. He says that, in the next few weeks, government scientists will use remote sensing to study the 6,800 square kilometres of the park and its surrounds to find potential sites of cheetah–human conflict. “The forest department needs to create a community stewardship programme so villagers are rewarded financially for protecting the cheetah,” Gopal says.
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