Five more cheetahs (three females and two males) will be released from the acclimatisation camps at the Kuno National Park (KNP) into “free-roaming conditions” before the onset of the monsoon rains in June, the Union Environment Ministry said in a statement on Monday.
The statement was based on a report submitted by an expert committee to the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), which is the nodal body for Project Cheetah. The committee consisted of Adrian Tordiffe, Veterinary Wildlife Specialist, University of Pretoria, South Africa; Vincent van der Merwe, Manager, Cheetah Metapopulation Project, South Africa; Qamar Qureshi, Lead Scientist, Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, and Amit Mallick, Inspector General of Forests, NTCA. They visited the KNP on April 30, 2023 and reviewed the current status of the Project Cheetah.
Twenty cheetahs have been brought from Namibia and South Africa since September 2022 as part of translocation programme to reintroduce the wild cat into Indian habitat. As part of their acclimatisation, the animals were housed in special enclosures. Two of the animals, however, have died — one from a kidney infection and one from heart failure, following, possibly, a strenuous hunt. The long-term plan to acclimatise the animals to Indian conditions is to gradually release the animals into the wild — though all the animals are radio-collared and the Madhya Pradesh State wildlife officials are tracking their movement — and keep adding more animals from Africa until a sizeable self-sustaining population is established in a decade or so, while accounting for natural mortality and acclimatisation-related challenges. So far, four of the cheetahs had already been released into the wild — with one of them even ranging outside the Kuno National Park and venturing into farms in Uttar Pradesh and having to be tranquillised and returned to the sanctuary.
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The remaining cheetahs, the statement said, would remain in the acclimatisation camps for the duration of the monsoon season (June-Sept.). “Certain internal gates will be left open to allow these cheetahs to utilise more space in the acclimatisation camps and for interactions between specific males and females to take place,” it added.
After September, when the monsoon ended, more animals would be released into the KNP or surrounding areas in “a planned manner” to the Gandhisagar sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh. Cheetahs would be allowed to move out of the KNP and not necessarily recaptured unless they ventured into areas where they were in “significant danger,” the statement added.
Concern about space and prey
Independent experts have raised concerns that the cheetahs, brought in from Africa, had on average too little space and limited access to prey in the KNP and this would pose considerable problems for their eventual flourishing in India. One of the scientists, who was associated with the study, told The Hindu that available space in the KNP — about 100,000 sq. km. in the park and 600,000 in the landscape surrounding the park — was adequate for 21 cheetahs. At present, there are 18. “The first point is that we cannot directly assume that what’s true for cheetah populations in Africa will exactly hold in India too,” said Dr. Qureshi. In Africa, the cheetah’s prey followed a migratory pattern requiring the cheetah to also traverse long distances to keep up with their prey. The forested environment in India meant that prey was not migratory and did not require the cheetah to travel great distances, he added.
“While many have made predictions about the anticipated carrying capacity of cheetahs in KNP based on other ecosystems in Namibia and East Africa, the actual number of animals that the reserve can accommodate can only be assessed after the animals are released and have established home ranges. Cheetah home range sizes and population densities vary tremendously for different cheetah populations in Africa and for obvious reasons, we do not have useful spatial ecology data for cheetahs in India yet.,” the Ministry statement added.
