Sending African cheetahs to India is ‘ecologically unsound’

Introducing African cheetahs to India is an “ill-advised” conservation attempt that risks causing the deaths of the charismatic big cats in human-wildlife conflict, a group of scientists have argued.

Last month, eight African cheetahs from Namibia were airlifted to India and released into Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park to mark the 72nd birthday of India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. 

Twelve cheetahs from South Africa remain in quarantine and are expected to arrive in Kuno from South Africa once the two countries conclude a memorandum of understanding. 

India’s plan, decades in the making, is to establish a viable free-ranging cheetah metapopulation, 70 years after its Asiastic cheetah was declared extinct. Fewer than 50 critically endangered Asiastic cheetahs remain and are only found in Iran.

But in their letter published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, the eight scientists from India, South Africa, Portugal, the Netherlands and Australia describe the translocation project as “ecologically unsound”, costly and one that “may serve as a distraction rather than help global cheetah and other science-based conservation efforts”. 

Unknown risks

Apart from the unknown ecological, disease and genetic risks involved in replacing Asiatic cheetahs with their larger, southern African counterparts, the authors argue that the plan is based on three “unsubstantiated” claims; namely that cheetahs have run out of space in Africa, that India has enough space for them and that conservation translocations have been successful.

“Neither Kuno National Park, which is only 748m² in area, unfenced, harbouring about 500 feral cattle and surrounded by a forested landscape with 169 human settlements, nor the other landscapes considered, are of the size and quality to permit self-sustaining and genetically viable cheetah populations,” they said.

The fenced-in cheetahs from Namibia are envisioned to soon move freely in India where average human population densities are 150 times higher, the authors said. “We anticipate that adopting such a speculative and unscientific approach will lead to human-cheetah conflicts, death of the introduced cheetahs or both, and will undermine other science-based species recovery efforts, both globally and within India.”

Distracting

Femke Broekhuis, of Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands, who has studied free-ranging cheetahs in Africa for more than 15 years, and is a corresponding author of the letter, said cheetah populations in Africa and Iran are under threat and in need of conservation action. 

“However, it is unlikely that introducing cheetahs to India is going to contribute to

cheetah conservation in a meaningful way. If anything, it distracts from the real issues at hand, which include habitat loss and the illegal cheetah trade,” Broekhuis added.

Her work and that of other cheetah researchers has shown that free-ranging cheetahs, even those that reside in prey-rich areas, require a lot of space. “Kuno does not provide this space and therefore there is a high chance that the introduced cheetahs will move beyond the park boundaries and encounter people, livestock and domestic dogs. 

“This may lead to a harmful situation for both the cheetahs and people living in the area. Many of these risks can be mitigated if a wider group of relevant experts are consulted before commencing such projects.”

The letter’s lead author is Arjun Gopalaswamy, a wildlife and statistical ecologist, who has been involved in quantitative assessments of cheetahs and other big cat populations in Asia and Africa for more than 20 years. 

India’s plan, he said, ignores crucial scientific findings from important, recent demographic studies on free-ranging cheetahs. “This can prove to be a costly mistake because the cheetah carrying capacities assumed in the plan relies entirely on projections made from a single, likely flawed, density estimate from Namibia from over a decade ago.”

South Africa’s metapopulation

The metapopulation is a network of 508 cheetahs in 70 protected areas across South Africa. According to project proponent Vincent van der Merwe, manager of the Metapopulation Initiative, the largest, protected wild cheetah population worldwide is the South African managed metapopulation.

“If you look at our initial cheetah reintroduction efforts in South Africa, it really took decades to get it right. Most initial cheetah reintroductions failed in South Africa. Almost 200 cheetahs sourced from Namibia were lost in the process.” 

Mistakes were made but “valuable lessons were learnt”, and reintroduction techniques were refined, he said. “Since 2011, we have coordinated 30 successful reintroductions, while only two have failed. We expect similar losses in India initially, and regular supplementation from the South Africa metapopulation will be key to the long-term success of the project. 

“Fortunately, we have a growing wild cheetah population in South Africa. Unless we supply animals for reintroduction efforts elsewhere, we are going to initiate costly and invasive contraception programmes in South Africa. Worst case scenario, euthanasia will have to be considered as a management tool.”

A genetically viable population in India will need at least 500 individuals and the plan is to send eight to 12 animals from South Africa to India annually “until they’ve established a sustainable metapopulation of their own”. 

Kuno will constitute the first reintroduction site. “There are more than 50 suitably sized reintroduced sites located within the historical range of cheetahs in India. Most of them are not ready for cheetah reintroduction. Concerted efforts are being made to restore ecological functionality in these protected areas, creating safe space potential wild cheetah reintroduction.”

Concerns

However, co-author of the letter, Dr Gus Mills, of the school of biology and environmental sciences at the University of Mpumalanga, who has studied free-ranging cheetahs for more than 40 years, said the essence of cheetah conservation should involve creating adequate areas for free-ranging cheetahs to carry out their functional role in ecosystems, without management. 

“Some of us expressed the concern about 14 years ago in a workshop, when the practice of managed metapopulation of ‘excess’ cheetahs within fenced reserves was first being formally discussed. 

“We worried then that this practice does not meaningfully contribute to conservation of free-ranging cheetahs by consolidating sufficient habitat and establishing free-ranging, naturally regulated populations.”

This practice, Mills said, is “not only unsustainable” but “can be very distracting” for what is really important for cheetah conservation and “is little better than creating a series of glorified safari parks”.

“It is now a good opportunity for practitioners working on managed metapopulations of cheetahs within fenced-in reserves to redirect their skills and demonstratively create a free-ranging, naturally regulated cheetah population within southern Africa first before recommending this plan to other countries. This will require cooperation between neighbours to take down a number of fences.”

Project Cheetah investment

The authors recommend India redirect its initial, massive “Project Cheetah” investment of £48-million towards global cheetah conservation efforts. This will yield extensive habitat protection, ensuring adequate wild prey, ensuring connectivity between populations and enhancing human-cheetah relations, preferably in other parts of Asia, such as Iran, or in Africa. 

“Although free-ranging cheetah populations within Africa face challenges, studies have shown that targeted work towards cheetah habitat protection and ensuring tolerance does work,” said co-author, David Thuo, a researcher who has been studying cheetahs in Kenya for close to a decade. “Such investments, if directed to cheetah conservation directly on the ground, can ensure meaningful impact for cheetah conservation.”

[/membership]