New Delhi —They are back after 70 years of extinction in India.
Eight big cats from Namibia took a long trek to the northern Indian city of Gwalior on Saturday as part of an ambitious and controversial plan to reintroduce cheetahs into the South Asian country.
Then, they moved to their new home: a vast national park in the heart of India, where scientists hope that the world's fastest terrestrial animals will roam again.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi Saturday morning released the cats into their fence. The cats come out of the cage and initially scan their new environment tentatively.
Modi said: "When the cheetah runs again...the grassland will be restored, biodiversity will increase, and ecotourism will be promoted."
cheetah was once widely spread in India and became extinct in 1952 due to hunting and habitat loss. They remain the first and only extinct predator since India's independence in 1947. India hopes imports of African cheetahs will help protect the country’s threatened and largely overlooked grasslands.
There are less than 7,000 adult cheetahs left in the world, and they now live in less than 9% of the original cheetah distribution range. Laurie Marker, who assisted in bringing cats to India’s Cheetah Conservation Fund, an advocacy and research organization that helped bring cats to India, said that habitat shrinking is a huge threat due to population growth and climate change, and that India’s grasslands and forests can provide “suitable” homes for big cats.
She said: "In order to save cheetahs from extinction, we need to create permanent places for cheetahs on the earth."
cheetah numbers in most countries are declining. South Africa is an exception, where cats are out of stock. Experts hope Indian forests can provide space for these cats to thrive. Currently, more than a dozen cheetahs in South Africa are in quarantine and are expected to arrive at Kuno National Park soon. Earlier this month, four cheetahs caught in South African reserves were airlifted to Mozambique , where the number of cheetahs dropped sharply. Mayukh Chatterjee of the International Union for Conservation of Nature said that when a new animal is mixed together, there may be "cascades and unexpected consequences".
For example, the surge in tiger population in India has caused more conflicts with people who share the same space. For cheetahs, people question how their presence will affect other carnivores, such as striped hyena , and even bird-like prey.
The first eight cheetahs from Namibia will be quarantined in a facility in the national park and monitored for a month to ensure they are not carrying pests. They will then be released into the park’s larger fence to help them adapt to the new environment. The fence contains natural prey—such as spotted deer and antelope, and scientists hope they can learn to hunt—that is designed to prevent other predators such as bears or leopards and .
cheetah will be equipped with tracking collars and will be released to the national park in about two months. Their movements will be tracked regularly, but in most cases they will do so alone.
According to scientists, the reserve is large enough to accommodate 21 cheetahs, and if they establish territory and breed, they can expand to other interrelated grasslands and forests that can accommodate more than a dozen other cheetahs.
There is only one village, and there are hundreds of families still living on the edge of the park. Indian officials said they will be transferred soon and any livestock losses caused by cheetahs will be compensated. The project is estimated to cost $11.5 million over five years, including $6.3 million paid by state-owned Indian oil company .
The relocation from mainland to mainland has been brewing for decades. The cats that originally roamed in India were Asian cheetahs, which are genetically unique cousins of cats living in Africa, with a distribution range extending to Saudi Arabia .
India had hoped to bring Asian cheetahs, but only dozens of them survived in Iran , and these cheetahs were too fragile to move.
Conservation geneticist Pamela Burger at Vienna Veterinary University said many obstacles remain, including the presence of other predators in India, such as leopards, which may compete with cheetahs.
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She said: "Instead of trying to create new websites with suspicious results, it's better to keep them in place now."
, South African veterinary wildlife expert, associated with the project, said the animals need help. He added that many African countries have not been as successful in their protection efforts, unlike India, which has strictly protected the population of big cats.
He said: "We cannot stand by and hope that species like cheetahs will survive alone without our help."
