Experts voice doubts as habitat and prey limitations threaten the cheetahs’ future
Male cheetah Pawan (formerly Oban), who was brought to Kuno from Namibia@KunoNationalPrk / X (formerly Twitter)
After nearly two years of bringing cheetahs from Africa to India, 26 of them, including 13 sub-adults and cubs, are still waiting to be released into the wild.
All but one are still being held captive. In September 2022, eight cheetahs were imported from Namibia and 12 more arrived from South Africa in February 2023.
Since then, the Cheetah Introduction Project has lost 11 cheetahs and welcomed 17 cubs. Cheetahs were captured and brought into captivity for treatment and monitoring after dying repeatedly during the 2023 monsoon due to septicaemia.
Despite the Indian government’s praise for the project, issues like a lack of prey and habitat remain.
According to recent reports, Kuno National Park’s (KNP) capacity to host cheetahs has been exceeded and the ‘excess cheetahs’ must be relocated to newly created fenced habitats in Madhya Pradesh’s Gandhi Sagar National Park.
The action plan for the project stated that KNP can accommodate 21 cheetahs.
Ravi Chellam, a wildlife biologist and conservation scientist, said the latest narrative raises several concerns about the cheetahs.
“Except for one cheetah, all the remaining 25 are captive in enclosures and it is not clear what criteria are used to determine surplus cheetahs. Currently, their assertion doesn’t have any ecological basis,” he said.
A senior forest official, however, told Down To Earth (DTE) that no decision has been taken regarding whether the cheetahs need to be shifted and if they are to be shifted, which ones, how and when remain to be decided.
Reports also state that KNP has witnessed a reduction in the population of chital, dropping from 8,000 in 2021 to about 6,500 within a year. Since the introduction of cheetahs to the park, approximately 1,500 more chital have been introduced.
The report ruled out poaching for bushmeat or game due to strict patrolling and camera traps in the park. DTE has asked the park management on multiple occasions regarding poaching in the area, but the authorities have consistently denied it.
KNP authorities attributed the high predation rate to a dense population of leopards in the region. About 90 leopards are estimated to consume a lot of chital, while the authorities cite that only 50 chital have been consumed by cheetahs so far.
However, Chellam questioned the narrative, saying that it is incorrect to blame the native and resident population of leopards and to subject them to various management interventions that lack an ecological basis. “The strategy seems to be to drastically shift the narrative to distract everyone. There is no consistency in thought or action,” he said.
The authorities now admit that bringing large numbers of chital from other reserves is draining the other habitats and are now mentioning the need for a strategy to reduce predation by leopards, he added. “But how is it possible to stop leopards from consuming food?” Chellam questioned.
Speaking with DTE, Rajesh Gopal, chairperson of the Cheetah Project Steering Committee, said bringing a tiger and two tigresses to establish in the landscape could be a biological way to address the issue.
He explained that in the wild, the landscape is shared between carnivores and herbivores, which live in their respective niches and also interact within and outside their niches.
“Species co-exist by sharing and dividing time and space in a given habitat. On rare occasions, they may clash, for example, a tiger with a leopard or a leopard with another leopard,” he added.
Gopal said KNP currently does not have an apex predator above leopards. “If a higher category predator is introduced, it may help resolve the issue rather than removing leopards from their habitat through human intervention,” he added.
He stated that a leopard weighing about 80 kg will be outmatched by a tiger weighing about 240 kg. These carnivores may avoid interspecies interactions and spread out in space, operation and time.
“Such a biological intervention will help in appropriating prey, reducing stress on the prey population and achieving co-existence,” he said.
Dharmendra Khandal, a conservation biologist with Tiger Watch, argued the possibility of poaching in the region cannot be entirely ruled out as the tribal communities residing in the forest area have been dependent on bushmeat for their sustenance.
Chellam said according to the authorities’ claims, Kuno’s leopards are excessively preying on chital. “This claim hasn’t really been supported by data, as numerous figures have been bandied about. Given the significant variation between these estimates, that too in a short period, it is almost impossible to make any sense based on these estimates. Clearly, the situation is more complex than what the authorities are willing to recognise or admit,” he added.
Khandal said introducing tigers into the landscape may not necessarily help control predation as claimed. “It can just be a move to attract tourists to ensure that they at least see a tiger if not a cheetah, as they are in an enclosure,” he said.
He added that the government claimed that the introduction of cheetahs would bring crores of rupees in tourism. But it has failed to achieve its targets.
Chellam also questioned why the government is still insisting on bringing tigers to Kuno and not lions, despite the 2013 order of the Supreme Court of India to translocate lions to Kuno.
By all accounts, the introduction of cheetahs has been a failure, as even after a year since they were brought into captivity due to septicaemia deaths, they have yet to be released into the wild, Khandal underlined.
“The authorities said the cheetahs would be released post-monsoon in August 2023 and since then winter and summer have passed and another monsoon is ongoing, yet the cheetahs remain in enclosures without any explanations. With such a long duration of confinement and being fed by staff, these cheetahs would never survive in the wild,” he added.
On contacting the Kuno Forest Division, the senior official stated the Cheetah Project Steering Committee has not made a decision about releasing the cheetahs into the wild and that the cheetahs will remain captive in enclosures.
Khandal said the questions raised by experts about habitat choice, landscape and prey base issues will not be resolved unless the government opens the doors for honest discussion and addresses the ecological aspects of the project.