Cheetah Reintroduction in India - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Reintroduction of Cheetah in India involves the artificial reestablishment of a population of cheetahs into areas where they had previously existed but were hunted into extinction by the British colonial officers and Indian Princes and Royalty; and where their former grassland scrub forest habitats that had been degraded have undergone some revitalization for the purpose with the help of the local forest department of the state and the Indian Central Government funding.

History

Until the 20th century, the Asiatic Cheetah

Asiatic Cheetah

The Asiatic Cheetah is now also known as the Iranian Cheetah, as the world's last few are known to survive mostly in Iran. Although recently presumed to be extinct in India, it is also known as the Indian Cheetah...

was quite common and roamed all the way from Arabia to Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

, Afghanistan

Afghanistan

Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...

and India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

. The Asiatic Cheetah was also known as the 'Hunting leopard' in India, and were kept by kings and princes to hunt gazelle

Gazelle

A gazelle is any of many antelope species in the genus Gazella, or formerly considered to belong to it. Six species are included in two genera, Eudorcas and Nanger, which were formerly considered subgenera...

. The Moghul Emperor

Emperor

An emperor is a monarch, usually the sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife or a woman who rules in her own right...

Akbar kept them for hunting gazelle

Gazelle

and Blackbuck

Blackbuck

Blackbuck is a species of antelope native to the Indian subcontinent. Their range decreased sharply during the 20th century. Since 2003, the IUCN lists the species as near threatened....

s. He was said to have had 1,000 cheetahs at one time for assisting in his royal hunts. Trapping of large numbers of adult Indian cheetahs, who had already learned hunting skills from wild mothers, for assisting in royal hunts is said to be another major cause of the species rapid decline in India as they never bred in captivity with only one record of a litter ever.

Extinction

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the species was already heading for extinction in many areas. The last physical evidence of the Asiatic Cheetah

Asiatic Cheetah

in India

India

was three shot by the Maharajah of Surguja in 1947 in eastern Madhya Pradesh

Madhya Pradesh

Madhya Pradesh , often called the Heart of India, is a state in central India. Its capital is Bhopal and Indore is the largest city....

. He also bears the dark honour of holding the record for shooting the most tiger

Tiger

The tiger is the largest cat species, reaching a total body length of up to and weighing up to . Their most recognizable feature is a pattern of dark vertical stripes on reddish-orange fur with lighter underparts...

s — a total of 1,360.

In India fifty years ago, prey was abundant, and it fed on the Blackbuck

Blackbuck

Blackbuck is a species of antelope native to the Indian subcontinent. Their range decreased sharply during the 20th century. Since 2003, the IUCN lists the species as near threatened....

, the Chinkara

Chinkara

The Chinkara is a species of gazelle found in south Asia.-Habitat and Distribution:It lives in grasslands and desert areas in India, Bangladesh and parts of Iran and Pakistan...

, and sometimes the Chital

Chital

The chital or cheetal , also known as chital deer, spotted deer or axis deer is a deer which commonly inhabits wooded regions of Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, and in small numbers in Pakistan...

and the Nilgai

Nilgai

The nilgai , sometimes called nilgau, is an antelope, and is one of the most commonly seen wild animals of central and northern India and eastern Pakistan; it is also present in parts of southern Nepal. The mature males appear ox-like and are also known as blue bulls...

.
With the death of the last remaining population of the Asiatic Cheetah in India, the species was declared extinct in India is the only animal in recorded history to become extinct from India due to unnatural causes.

Cloning

During the early 2000s, Indian scientists from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology

Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology

The Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology or CCMB is a National level Research laboratory located in Hyderabad, India. CCMB is one of the constituent national laboratories of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research CSIR, the premier multidisciplinary Research & Development...

(CCMB), Hyderabad, proposed a plan to clone Asiatic Cheetah

Asiatic Cheetah

s obtained form Iran

Iran

. India requested Iran to translocate one live pair to India. If not possible, Indian scientists requested Iran to allow them collect some live cells of the Cheetah in Iran itself, which can then be made into living cell lines.

However, Iran refused saying that it would neither send any Cheetahs to India nor would allow Indian scientists to collect their tissue samples. It is said that Iran wanted an Asiatic lion

Asiatic Lion

The Asiatic lion also known as the Indian lion, Persian lion and Eurasian Lion is a subspecies of lion. The only place in the wild where the lion is found is in the Gir Forest of Gujarat, India...

in exchange for a cheetah and that India wasn't ready to export any of its Asiatic lion

Asiatic Lion

The Asiatic lion also known as the Indian lion, Persian lion and Eurasian Lion is a subspecies of lion. The only place in the wild where the lion is found is in the Gir Forest of Gujarat, India...

s. But, the Indian government has again contacted Iran to explore the possibility of it supplying cheetahs to help to re-establish their presence on the subcontinent decades after they were hunted to extinction. The Iranian embassy in Delhi said its government was in the process of “arranging” talks.

Genetic sub-species level differentiation

Asiatic cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus) has, for a long time, been theoretically classified as a sub-species of the cheetah with the suffix "venaticus" applied at the end of its scientific binomial name Acinonyx jubatus. However, at a Cheetah reintroduction workshop organised in India on 9th September 2009, Stephen J. O'Brien

Stephen J. O'Brien

Stephen J. O'Brien is an American geneticist. He was the editor-in-chief, and is currently the advisory editor of the scientific journal Journal of Heredity. He received a Ph.D. degree studying genetics at Cornell University in 1971 and was a Cornell A. D...

from Laboratory of Genomic Diversity of National Cancer Institute

National Cancer Institute

The National Cancer Institute is part of the National Institutes of Health , which is one of 11 agencies that are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The NCI coordinates the U.S...

, USA who has in the past conducted numerous prestigious genetic studies - including those on Asiatic lions - said that according to the latest modern genetic studies, it was discovered that the Asiatic cheetah was, in fact, genetically identical to the African Cheetah with which it had separated only about 5000 years ago. This was not enough time for a sub-species

Subspecies

Subspecies in biological classification, is either a taxonomic rank subordinate to species, ora taxonomic unit in that rank . A subspecies cannot be recognized in isolation: a species will either be recognized as having no subspecies at all or two or more, never just one...

level differentiation; O'Brien said that in comparison the Asian

Asiatic Lion

The Asiatic lion also known as the Indian lion, Persian lion and Eurasian Lion is a subspecies of lion. The only place in the wild where the lion is found is in the Gir Forest of Gujarat, India...

and African lion subspecies were separated some 100,000 years ago, as was the African and Asian leopard subspecies 169,000 years ago. Cheetah expert Laurie Marker of the Cheetah Conservation Fund

Cheetah Conservation Fund

Founded in 1990, the Cheetah Conservation Fund has as its mission to be the world’s resource charged with protecting the cheetahs and ultimately ensuring its future on our planet...

(CCF) and other wildlife experts advised the Indian Government that for reintroduction

Cheetah Reintroduction in India

Reintroduction of Cheetah in India involves the artificial reestablishment of a population of cheetahs into areas where they had previously existed but were hunted into extinction by the British colonial officers and Indian Princes and Royalty; and where their former grassland scrub forest habitats...

purposes India should source the Cheetah from Africa where they were much more numerous instead of trying to have some removed from the critically endangered low population of about 70 to 100 or so Asiatic Cheetahs left in Iran.

India's Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh, chief wildlife wardens of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, officials of the environment ministry, cheetah experts from across the globe including Laurie Marker from Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF), representatives from the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) including Yadvendradev Jhala, and IUCN, an international conservation NGO, among others, participated in a meeting about this issue. The conference was organised by Wildlife Trust of India (WTI)

Subsequently, in 2011, a much more detailed five year genetic study involving gathering of DNA samples from the wild, zoos and museums in eight countries was published in Molecular Ecology (Journal) on 8th Jan 2011. This newer study concluded that African and Asiatic cheetahs were in reality genetically very distinct and had in fact separated 32000 to 67000 years ago. Sub-species level differentiation had taken place due to longer separation from the African population. The effect of this latest revelation on India's plan to reintroduce cheetahs to the country is yet unknown.

Introduction of African Cheetah

As the world's last Asiatic cheetah population in Iran is currently classified as critically endangered

Critically endangered

Version 2010.3 of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species identified 3744 Critically Endangered species, subspecies and varieties, stocks and subpopulations.Critically Endangered by kingdom:*1993 Animalia*2 Fungi*1745 Plantae*4 Protista-References:...

, with an estimated total of below 100, the cheetah experts felt that it would not be conducive to disturb it. India is therefore exploring an alternate plan of importing the African Cheetah

Cheetah

The cheetah is a large-sized feline inhabiting most of Africa and parts of the Middle East. The cheetah is the only extant member of the genus Acinonyx, most notable for modifications in the species' paws...

(Acinonyx jubatus) from some Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

n countries where they are in greater abundance, with a view to breeding them in captivity and then setting them free in protected, semi-arid habitats in India.

Since the Asiatic Cheetah went extinct in India about half a century ago, suggestions to reestablish the cheetah in India have been ongoing but this is the first time that a major conservation NGO like Wildlife Trust of India

Wildlife Trust of India

The Wildlife Trust of India, is a non profit conservation organisation based in New Delhi, India. Its principal concerns are crisis management to prevent destruction of India's wildlife and the provision of quick, efficient aid to those areas that require it the most...

(WTI) has taken it on them and are currently spearheading the Cheetah reintroduction plan in India in collaboration with Wildlife Institute of India

Wildlife Institute of India

The Wildlife Institute of India is a autonomous institution under the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India.WII carries out wildlife research in areas of study like Biodiversity, Endangered Species, Wildlife Policy, Wildlife Management, Wildlife Forensics, Spatial Modeling,...

(WII). For this purpose a meeting of International cheetah experts was organized in Gajner, near Bikaner in the Indian state of Rajasthan

Rajasthan

Rājasthān the land of Rajasthanis, , is the largest state of the Republic of India by area. It is located in the northwest of India. It encompasses most of the area of the large, inhospitable Great Indian Desert , which has an edge paralleling the Sutlej-Indus river valley along its border with...

during September 2009. As per the discussions held at the meeting cheetah experts from around the world favored importing African cheetahs from Africa for the proposed reintroduction in India as against getting them from the world's last remnant population of Asiatic Cheetah

Asiatic Cheetah

, also called Iranian cheetah, that only survive in Iran which are currently critically endangered

Critically endangered

with their entire population estimated to be below 100. International experts including Laurie Marker of Cheetah Conservation Fund

Cheetah Conservation Fund

Founded in 1990, the Cheetah Conservation Fund has as its mission to be the world’s resource charged with protecting the cheetahs and ultimately ensuring its future on our planet...

(CCF), credited with developing cheetah conservation programmes in a number of countries, including Iran, argues that the world's last Asiatic cheetah population in Iran is abysmally low to spare any individuals for reintroduction efforts in India. Stephen J O’Brien

Stephen J. O'Brien

, world's leading conservation geneticist and Chief of the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity at the National Cancer Institute

National Cancer Institute

(NCI), USA, has clarified that there is no significant genetic difference between the African and the Iran's Asiatic cheetah, as per genetic research carried out by him African and Indian cheetahs were only separated just some 5,000 years ago which is not enough for a sub-species level differentiation. "African and Asian cheetahs are similar in nature and have same genetic make-up. So India can have the animal from South Africa if it is not getting from Iran (which has already refused to part with its Asian cheetah)," noted the cheetah genetic expert Stephen J O Brien. At the meeting experts also identified South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

, Botswana

Botswana

Botswana, officially the Republic of Botswana , is a landlocked country located in Southern Africa. The citizens are referred to as "Batswana" . Formerly the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, Botswana adopted its new name after becoming independent within the Commonwealth on 30 September 1966...

, Kenya

Kenya

Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...

, Tanzania

Tanzania

The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...

and UAE as countries from where the cheetah could be imported for India. "About 5 to 10 animals annually have to be brought to India over a period of 5 to 10 years," recommended another working group, which was formed for exploring sourcing and translocation of the cheetah.

The Ministry of Environment & Forests, Government of India has approved the recommendation for a detailed survey of potential reintroduction sites in the four Indian states of Rajasthan

Rajasthan

, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh

Madhya Pradesh

Madhya Pradesh , often called the Heart of India, is a state in central India. Its capital is Bhopal and Indore is the largest city....

and Chattisgarh, shortlisted during the consultative meeting. Three more Indian states Karnataka

Karnataka

Karnataka , the land of the Kannadigas, is a state in South West India. It was created on 1 November 1956, with the passing of the States Reorganisation Act and this day is annually celebrated as Karnataka Rajyotsava...

, Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh , is one of the 28 states of India, situated on the southeastern coast of India. It is India's fourth largest state by area and fifth largest by population. Its capital and largest city by population is Hyderabad.The total GDP of Andhra Pradesh is $100 billion and is ranked third...

and Maharashtra

Maharashtra

Maharashtra is a state located in India. It is the second most populous after Uttar Pradesh and third largest state by area in India...

are being also considered. This survey will form the basis for the roadmap of reintroduction of cheetah in India, and will be carried out by the Wildlife Institute of India

Wildlife Institute of India

(WII), in collaboration with the Wildlife Trust of India

Wildlife Trust of India

(WTI), the Bombay Natural History Society

Bombay Natural History Society

The Bombay Natural History Society, founded on 15 September 1883, is one of the largest non-governmental organizations in India engaged in conservation and biodiversity research. It supports many research efforts through grants, and publishes the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society. Many...

(BNHS) and the concerned state governments with their respective forest departments.

Current status

The Ministry of forests and environment of India

India

is now hammering out the details of the cheetah conservation plan. As a first step, a two-day seminar of technical experts on cheetahs was held in Gajner from September 9, 2009. Experts on cheetah, including Divyabhanusinh and M K Ranjitsinh presented their papers on how to go about bringing cheetahs to India.

The initial plans were to bring the cheetahs to Gajner Wildlife Sanctuary. "We want to set up a breeding ground for the cheetahs and Gajner seems to fit the bill perfectly. Thereafter, they will be transported to various states," he added.

India is also in talks with the Islamic Republic of Iran over the possibility of sending a pair of Asiatic Cheetah to India. It is said that Iran wanted an Asiatic lion

Asiatic Lion

The Asiatic lion also known as the Indian lion, Persian lion and Eurasian Lion is a subspecies of lion. The only place in the wild where the lion is found is in the Gir Forest of Gujarat, India...

in exchange for a cheetah and that India wasn't ready to export any of its Asiatic lion

Asiatic Lion

The Asiatic lion also known as the Indian lion, Persian lion and Eurasian Lion is a subspecies of lion. The only place in the wild where the lion is found is in the Gir Forest of Gujarat, India...

s. The Iranian embassy in Delhi said that its government was in the process of “arranging” talks.

The Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh said that African cheetahs could be brought to India within three years having just returned from a trip to South Africa, one of the potential source-habitats of cheetahs to be moved to India.

The Wildlife Institute of India is spearheading the project, and will unveil a road map and destination for the African cheetahs — possible options are in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat — by May-end.

Kuno Palpur

Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary

Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary or Palpur-Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary lies in the Sheopur district of north western Madhya Pradesh, a state in central India. It is about 120 kilometres from Gwalior....

and Nauradehi wildlife sanctuaries in Madhya Pradesh and Shahgarh landscape in Jaisalmer in Rajasthan have been selected in by the Wildlife Institute of India as most suitable sites for the reintroduction project.

Shortlisted Cheetah reintroduction sites in India

Currently, wildlife experts have shortlisted three regions which have the potential to support cheetah populations. The Nauradehi Wildlife Sanctuary and Kuno-Palpur Wildlife Sanctuaries

Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary

Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary or Palpur-Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary lies in the Sheopur district of north western Madhya Pradesh, a state in central India. It is about 120 kilometres from Gwalior....

in Madhya Pradesh and the Shahgarh bulge landscape in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan have been declared potentially suitable for the reintroduction of the cheetah. The Kuno-Palpur Wildlife Sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh has the potential to hold populations of all four of India's big cats the tiger, the leopard, the Asiatic lion as well as the cheetah, all four of which have coexisted in the same habitats historically before they were wiped out due to over hunting and habitat destruction. Since the Shahgarh Landscape is fenced along the Indo-Pak border region, the addition of more fencing will ensure adequate protection for the cheetah population. The Nauradehi Wildlife Sanctuary (1197km2) is part of a much larger forested landscape (5500km2 ) which can host the cheetah as well.

At a future date when sufficient population has built up other former range habitats in India after revitalizing them may also be considered for reintroduction like the Banni grasslands and Desert National Park

Desert National Park

Desert National Park, Rajasthan, India, is situated in the west Indian state of Rajasthan near the town of Jaisalmer. This is one of the largest national parks, covering an area of 3162 km². The Desert National Park is an excellent example of the ecosystem of the Thar Desert. Sand dunes form...

etc.

External links

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History

Extinction

Cloning

Genetic sub-species level differentiation

Introduction of African Cheetah

Current status

Shortlisted Cheetah reintroduction sites in India

Further reading

External links