Antelopes may be shivering on their cloven hooves in India as one of the country’s top predators is set to return from extinction. The fast and deadly cheetah will be reintroduced to India, 70 years after it was considered extinct there. “It’s great to get back a lost piece of heritage that we’ve lost to human causes,” Yadvendradev Jhala, dean of the Wildlife Institute of India, told As It Happens guest host Paul Hunter. “I’ve been working on this for several years, almost 20 years now.” Soon, 20 cheetahs will be transported from South Africa and Namibia to India as part of reintroduction efforts. The cats were mostly captured by back-up as vets dropped tranquilizer darts from helicopters. There is good reason to keep your distance. You don’t want to get too close to a conscious cheetah after all, even if you’re trying to help. Yadvendradev Jhala has been working to reintroduce cheetahs to India for the past 20 years. (Submitted by Yadvendradev Jhala) Since then, the cats have been microchipped, given antibiotics and tested and vaccinated for diseases. They are now in quarantine as they await their journey to their new home. According to the BBC, the cheetahs will travel by cargo plane from Johannesburg to Delhi and then be taken to Kuno National Park, a wildlife sanctuary in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Once there, the cheetahs will be quarantined for at least a month and then released into the wild. And after 20 years of cheetah conservation work, Jala is looking forward to seeing the magnificent creature in India again. “It’s something that’s incredible. The speed is one aspect of it, but just the majesty of the animal itself, even if it’s walking on the pasture, it’s a great animal to watch,” Jala said.
Hunted to extinction
Cheetahs have been extinct in India for the past 70 years. (Cameron Spencer/Getty Images) According to Jhala, it is no mystery why the cheetah disappeared from the grasslands of India. During British rule, people were offered rewards to kill the creatures in an attempt to make the country safe from deadly predators. “Eastern religions see nature as something that is under the guardianship of humans,” Jala said. “That attitude of curation had been lost [when] the British arrived in the country and it became exploitative.” India gained independence from Britain in 1947 and the last cheetah was shot that same year, Jala said. The species was considered extinct in the country until 1952. With this death, Jala says an important part of Indian culture has been lost. “The word ‘cheetah’ is of Sanskrit origin. It comes from India… there is a reference to the cheetah in the ancient Vedas about 4,000 years ago. There are cave paintings made by Neolithic men,” Jala said. “[The] Cheetah has been an integral part of Indian culture, heritage… and religion too.” This is not the first time India has tried to reboot its cheetah population. In the 1970s, India proposed a trade in big cats. India would give Iran some of its lions in exchange for some Asiatic cheetahs. But when the last Shah of the Imperial State of Iran was overthrown, the negotiations collapsed.
Doing what cheetahs do
For the reintroduction to be successful, the cheetahs will need to reproduce, Jalla says. (Mladen Antonov/AFP/Getty Images) Jhala says the key to successfully introducing the cheetahs to their new home will depend on their ability to climb it if you catch the drift. “Once they’re released, hopefully they’ll do their thing, what cheetahs do: mate, reproduce and produce more cheetahs,” Jalla said. But the effort will not be based solely on their pairing. Jhala hopes they can bring 35 to 50 to India over the next five years. “We want to capture the genetic variability found in these countries so that the population in India is genetically vibrant and we can create a viable population in India,” Jalla said. This may seem like bad news for the Indian antelope, which is the cheetah’s main food source in the region. But Jhala says there are evolutionary advantages to being the prey of super-fast cats. “What happens is that the weak in prey populations disappear. So it’s a very important evolutionary force for herbivores. And that evolutionary force, as nature intended it to be, needs to be restored,” he explained. Written by Philip Drost. Interview produced by Samraweet Yohannes.
