Reintroduction of the Cheetah to India

Oh wow, in that case I'm even more interested than before. I'd be super interested in hearing any further insights you got from them. My understanding is that there is diversity among the high-ups in which some are extremely keen on the cheetah project to create a flagship conservation project for grasslands (which I dig very much) while others would prefer that more focus be given to the existing challenges of strengthening PA connectivity or mitigating the impact of infrastructure on non-protected wilderness.

I don't question the existence of a native range in India - although there are some conservationists like Valmik Thapar who do. He even questions the historic range of the lion but I find the cheetah arguments a little more convincing, although to be clear I am still with the 99% of folks who believe that both species were native to the subcontinent. Valmik's book is Exotic Aliens: The Lion and the Cheetah in India.

What I'm saying is that we don't have reliable scientific records on the specificities of cheetah existence in India. What were population densities like? How did those differ between semiarid grassland in Gujarat and open scrub forest in Madhya Pradesh? How do those numbers interact with those of threatened ground birds, wolves, hyenas, etc.? Maybe it's not that relevant. I'm not an expert, ofc. Just hoping that the experts take this stuff into account because often in India that is not the case. And this is all the ecological stuff before we even get into the very persistent social and economic considerations in a country with as many humans as mine.

I'll check out the book, thanks for the rec. I've actually met the author - went to the launch of his book on Indian lions as a kid!

EDIT: also, my point about the import of cheetahs still stands, I think. I was saying that it is difficult to know much about the ecology of wild cheetahs in India because the import as well as the use of semi-domesticated indigenous cheetahs muddies already muddy waters. I'm not concerned with the subspecific purity stuff, just the fact that reintroducing India's cheetahs is littered with unknowns.

Like, it's not similar to reintroducing rhinos to parts of their African range where they went extinct a decade or two ago. It's not even similar to reintroducing North American large carnivores to habitat that these species (i) inhabited much more recently, (ii) were even slightly better studied in, (iii) can draw inferences from slightly similar source habitat. And that is before we even consider the human element which is unprecedented in India.

It just feels to me like the Indian cheetah reintroduction would be among if not the most experimental (bordering on fantastical) in the world, for many reasons. And I hope we're ready for such a large experiment.

 

It would be interesting to see what Indian cheetahs would hunt in their new Indian home if they’re introduced,Blackbuck and Indian gazelles would be their main prey as only the cheetah that can match their speed and it is to believe what the extinct indian species hunted as well. I can see them also taking Deer species like Chital,Hog Deer and Muntjacs. But like others have said it would be the other numbers of predators that would compete with the cheetahs that would be a concern

 

Couldn't it be argued that is simply due to climate? A lot of tropical mammal species grow thicker coats in response to being moved to zoos in temperate climes. Lions do it all the time, causing overexcited zoo directors to claim they might indeed have Barbary's!

 

It could be, but this is nonetheless a morphological difference. They also have a flatter, rounder face and a more orangey fur colour. So they have split enough for them to be regarded as properly separate.

 

Have there been any updates on the reintroduction of cheetahs to India

 

Admittedly, I am not that familiar with the specifics of cheetah subspecific taxonomy, but I would tend to agree that these features are probably more indicative of geographic variation than divergent evolutionary lineages. In general, I tend to not care for the subspecies label because they often reflect geographically restricted phenotypic variants without population structure and not diverging lineages/incipient species. I'm all for protecting genetically structured populations within a species and subspecies, if they are to exist, should reflect that.

 

I have often wondered if humans have so fragmented the ranges of some species, much of it historically, that some are mistaking genetic and morphological similarities between individuals in isolated populations as representative of a subspecies when they in fact just reflect traits that where once on a spectrum of a natural cline or were born from the group being derived from a bottleneck of limited founders.

I've always found it hard to accept for example that there could be so many definitive subspecies in tigers when historically most of them would have blended into a continuous distribution.

But... i'm not biologist so this could be just ignorance on my part.

And also, distinct morphological extremes of a species cline are worthy of preservation. I doubt for example, that you could hypothetically repopulate the much larger and thickly-furred koalas of southern Australia with the scrawny tropical variety you find in up in Queensland.

 

I guess a similar situation has arisen with the Asiatic lion (shorter mane, generally smaller, etc.).

 

Hope that this initiative progresses and goes ahead. Very interesting.

 

India's last cheetah was killed 70 years ago. Should the country import a different subspecies from Namibia?

A nature reserve in India could soon be the only location in the world to host wild populations of four major big cat species – tiger, lion, leopard and cheetah. Kuno-Palpur, in central state of Madhya Pradesh, may not be one of India’s best-known sanctuaries but it is certainly becoming one of its most controversial. In early 2020, the country’s supreme court agreed that wildlife authorities there could reintroduce the cheetah to India, 70 years after its local extinction.

Cheetahs once roamed across much of India and the Middle East, but today the entire Asian cheetah population is confined to just a few dozen animals in remote regions of Iran. The reluctance of the Iranian authorities to part with any of these rare creatures has led India farther afield in its attempts to secure a founder population. Currently, the favoured option is African cheetahs available from Namibia, which has the world’s largest population.

Not so fast: why India’s plan to reintroduce cheetahs may run into problems

 

Why mixing politics with science produces something resembling wishful pseudscience and as far remover from basic criteria for reintroductions as can be. The source population and the original population are genetically as wide apart as possible, aside from other questionmarks over suitability of the proposed site.

 

Reading through this piece to which I'll post the link below, it does put a lot more perspective on these plans.

Here are a couple of quotes from it that I thought were very pertinent observations (particularly with regards to the Asiatic lion!) :

“classic case of misplaced conservation priorities.” “You have species like the lion for whose relocation preparation has been made for nearly three decades followed by an SC judgement on it in 2013. But for seven years, the government has been dragging its feet on it,”

“It is ironic that we want to shift our whole conservation focus on a species that went extinct in the 1950s rather than those which are on the verge of going extinct in a few years. Even the 2013 SC judgement noted that it is a necessity to find alternative homes for highly-endangered species like the great Indian bustard, Bengal florican, Asiatic lion, wild buffalo, dugong and the Manipur brow-antlered deer,”


Why India’s plan to introduce the African cheetah into its forests is a case of misplaced priorities

 

Update about the re-introduction plans :

70 years after big cat’s extinction, India prepares to welcome cheetahs from Africa

 

But Iran has a rather different climate to India. In India its likely even the genuine Asian cheetah would have been short-haired more like African ones perhaps?

 

THAT would be the BIGGEST conservation mistake as (southern )African cheetahs do not bear resemblance to any close source population of Asiatic cheetah.

It has been talked about before and every time some politicians and policy makers seem to forgo every law in the book of reintroduction criteria. If only, the Indian authorities would make Asiatic lion, Bengal tiger, snow leopard and Indian leopard conservation the success it should be. No need to focus on a species hard on the heals of these priorities and where much baseline conservation work and recovery is still very much a first hand need.

 

I agree, but perhaps to some extent these Indian authorities have experienced a fatigue towards the species you mention and the strategic long game / fight thinking necessary to conserving these ?

It is far less glamorous to continue year after year and decade after decade work towards conserving the same old species then to move onto something novel, "sexy" and exciting like this prospect of "bringing the cheetah back to India".

 

All cheetahs look virtually the same to me, and I am something of an amateur cat expert. I can tell the difference between a leopard and a jaguar at a glance, I can tell the difference between a Siberian tiger and a Malayan tiger and a Sumatran tiger, but I cannot tell (by viewing) the difference between an African cheetah and an Asian cheetah. I imagine there are (perhaps subtle) genetic differences, but to say they do not bear any resemblance is an absurdity (assuming you mean physical/morphological differences).

 

But can you tell the difference between a indian, indochinese, malayan and south china tiger?

 

In my opinion the difference between Asiatic and African cheetahs is much more pronounced than the differences between the tiger subspecies cited above, but of course that is fairly subjective.

 

No, probably not.