Cheetah reintroduction project

• IAS NEXT, Lucknow
• 22, Mar 2022

Reference News:-

The cheetah, which became extinct in India after Independence, is all set to return with the Union Government launching an action plan.

• Under the ‘Action Plan for Introduction of Cheetah in India’, 50 of these big cats will be introduced in the next five years.
• The action plan was launched at the 19th meeting of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA).

 What is reintroduction and why reintroduce Cheetah now?

• ‘Reintroduction’ of a species means releasing it in an area where it is capable of surviving.
• Reintroductions of large carnivores have increasingly been recognised as a strategy to conserve threatened species and restore ecosystem functions.
• The cheetah is the only large carnivore that has been extirpated, mainly by over-hunting in India in historical times.
• India now has the economic ability to consider restoring its lost natural heritage for ethical as well as ecological reasons.

Facts:

• The cheetah, Acinonyx jubatus, is one of the oldest of the big cat species, with ancestors that can be traced back more than five million years to the Miocene era.
• The cheetah is also the world’s fastest land mammal.
• African Cheetah is listed as vulnerable in IUCN red listed species.
• The country’s last spotted feline died in Chhattisgarh in 1947. Later, the cheetah — which is the fastest land animal — was declared extinct in India in 1952.
• The Asiatic cheetah is classified as a “critically endangered” species by the IUCN Red List, and is believed to survive only in Iran.

Cheetah reintroduction programme in India:

The Wildlife Institute of India at Dehradun had prepared a ₹260-crore cheetah re-introduction project seven years ago.

• India has plans to reintroduce cheetahs at the Kuno National Park in Sheopur and Morena districts of Madhya Pradesh’s Gwalior-Chambal region.
• This could be the world’s first inter-continental cheetah translocation project.

Reasons for extinction:

• The reasons for extinction can all be traced to man’s interference. Problems like human-wildlife conflict, loss of habitat and loss of prey, and illegal trafficking, have decimated their numbers.
• The advent of climate change and growing human populations have only made these problems worse.
• With less available land for wildlife, species that require vast home range like the cheetah are placed in competition with other animals and humans, all fighting over less space.

What has the Supreme Court said?

The 2013 order of the Supreme Court quashed plans to introduce African cheetahs in India and more specifically at Kuno national park in Madhya Pradesh.

• African cheetahs are not required to perform the role of the top predator in these habitats when the site (Kuno) that they have identified already has a resident population of leopards, transient tigers and is also the site for the translocation of Asiatic lions as ordered by the Supreme Court.
• Last year (2021), the Supreme Court lifted its seven-year-long stay on a proposal to introduce African Cheetahs from Namibia into the Indian habitat.