Cheetahs return to India after going extinct there over 70 years ago

NEW DELHI — When a local king in central India shot dead three cheetahs in 1947, he killed what were believed to be the last of these creatures in the country, and they were declared extinct in India five years later.
On Friday, eight of these wild cats, the world’s fastest land animals, were flown from Namibia in Africa to India as part of an effort to reintroduce them into the country.
The global population of cheetahs is 6,500 to 7,100, according to a list of threatened animals from the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Africa is home to most of the cheetahs, which are extinct across Asia, except in Iran. They are disappearing in large part because of poaching, shrinking habitats and a loss of prey.
“To save cheetahs from extinction, we need to create permanent places for them on Earth. India has areas of grassland and forest habitat, which are appropriate for this species,” said Laurie Marker, founder of the Cheetah Conservation Fund, an international nonprofit that has helped the Indian and Namibian governments with the relocation effort.
Under the elaborate plan, five female cheetahs and three males, between the ages of 2 and 6 years, were flown on a chartered Boeing 747 jet from Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, to Gwalior in central Madhya Pradesh state. (Organizers previously said the cheetahs would be first sent to northern India.) The animals were then moved in a chopper to nearby Kuno National Park, where they will be housed, said S.P. Yadav, the head of India’s tiger conservation organization overseeing the move
For the first month, the animals will remain quarantined in an enclosure while being monitored for disease and adaptation. Once they have acclimatized, they will be released into the 285 square miles of the national park.
“This is the only large mammal which India has lost since independence. It is our moral and ethical responsibility to restore it,” said Yadav.
India has seen an increase in its tiger and leopard populations over the years, government data shows. The number of tigers doubled to nearly 3,000 between 2006 and 2018, despite a decline in the forest area they occupy.
Yadav said India’s goal is to develop a viable population of cheetahs in fenced-in areas. India’s plan, which costs an estimated $11 million, aims to bring in about 50 cheetahs over the next few years from South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe.
Some wildlife experts in India are skeptical.
Ravi Chellam, a wildlife biologist and conservation scientist based in Bangalore, said the project’s scientific foundations are “weak” and its conservation claims are “unrealistic.”