What is at stake with India’s first cheetah sanctuary?

If everything goes as planned over the year, the Kuno-Palpur National Park in Madhya Pradesh could become the country’s first-ever cheetah sanctuary. As it awaits the arrival of six to eight cheetahs from Namibia, the authorities are gearing up for the welcome. Although the plan of bringing cheetahs to India was in the works for more than a decade, it came close to a realisation after the Supreme Court’s nod in January 2020. The now-6,800 km² expanse of the proposed landscape aimed for a bigger glory—of being the first to have four charismatic cats—tigers, lions, cheetahs, and leopards. That plan went into jeopardy when procuring a few Asiatic lions from Gir National Park met with strong administrative resistance from Gujarat. For now, the arriving cheetahs may benefit from some of the park’s infrastructure intended for lions.

Species reintroduction is a well-known practice in conservation. Animals of an endangered species are introduced into the wild to survive and reproduce and establish a self-sustaining population, thereby also restoring the ecological balance. A widely-recognised success story of such reintroductions is that of the Grey wolves in the Yellowstone National Park, USA. Studies have shown that after a couple of decades of introducing wolves, which had gone extinct locally, the entire ecosystem benefited from it. India has had its tryst with successful reintroductions of pygmy hogs in Assam and gharials (fish-eating crocodiles) in a few rivers. However, with a predator like the African cheetah, the story gets murky.

The case for reintroducing cheetahs

On paper, the ambitious plan to bring back cheetahs, which went extinct in India around 70 years ago, sounds exciting. In 2009, the central government tried to procure Asiatic cheetahs—the ones found in India long ago—from Iran. When the plan did not materialise, the government turned to Namibia. In 2010, researchers from the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, and the Wildlife Trust of India, Noida, assessed this plan’s feasibility, identified possible reintroduction sites, and weighed its benefits.

A primary driver to reintroduce cheetahs, according to the report, is bringing back our ‘lost natural heritage’ and, in the process, introducing another carnivore into the ecosystem that can reign in herbivore numbers. The report also states that the reintroduction could boost the management of grasslands in India, the primary habitat for cheetahs, and help local pastoralists graze their livestock. “The venture must be viewed not simply as an introduction of a species, however charismatic it may be, but as an endeavour to better manage and restore some of our most valuable yet most neglected ecosystems and the species dependent upon them,” it asserts.

While drafting the report, an initial study surmised that the Kuno-Palpur wildlife sanctuary, which was then only about 750 km² in size, had the necessary antelope numbers to support the new predator in the ecosystem. The reintroduction also means huge prospects for tourism and revenues for the local communities living around the park. Most of the people are resettled tribals who once lived inside the forest but had to move to make way for the lions, which never came. The old settlements have now turned into patches of grasslands and shrubs, where cheetahs will be seen.

A conservational ‘misstep’?

Since the cheetah reintroduction plan was floated, some conservationists have objected to its grandeur, pointing out that India has no shortage of wildlife that requires attention. “In conservation, we have limited resources and time to conserve multiple species. I think it is pragmatic to focus our interventions on tigers, leopards, lions, and snow leopards,” says Dr Krithi Karanth, Chief Conservation Scientist and Director at the Centre for Wildlife Studies, Bengaluru. Drawing from her decades of research on conservation efforts focused on India’s mammal extinctions, she questions the need for conserving an African species.

Dr Arjun M Gopalaswamy, a wildlife and statistical ecologist, and the Science Advisor, Global Programmes, Wildlife Conservation Society, who also works in African ecosystems, argues that India needs to draw its plans based on ecological and behavioural studies on cheetahs from Africa or Iran. “Making any reintroduction plans involves wild guesswork if no attempt has been made to understand their populations first hand in Africa or Iran,” he cautions.

In a recent, field study involving more than 79,000 km of drive effort on cheetah populations in the Masai Mara of Kenya, Dr Gopalaswamy and his colleagues found that even in a prey-rich landscape, cheetahs occurred at very low densities. They found only 9-17 female cheetahs within the 2,400 km² landscape (adjoined by >20,000 km² of grassland habitat) over the study period. “Our study demonstrates that cheetahs, especially females, moved widely and opportunistically (with their home range exceeding 1000 km² in some cases), depending upon the seasonal availability of prey,” he says. Could Kuno-Palpur, which is a fraction of Mara in size, support a self-sustaining population of cheetahs? That’s a cause for concern, especially in the absence of a vast grassland habitat like the savannas.

Possibilities of human-wildlife conflicts

With its big cats and large herbivores like elephants and rhinos, India is no stranger to human-wildlife conflicts. “Human-wildlife conflict is a significant challenge with 80,000-100,000 incidents reported to the government every year,” says Dr Karanth, whose research also involves looking at the cost of such conflicts. What would happen if we add cheetahs to the mix? “I don’t think adding one more to the mix is wise unless you are prepared to deal with addressing them better,” she points out.

Dr Anish Andheria, President of the Wildlife Conservation Trust, has a similar view. “On a lot of occasions, the feeling of 'conflict' between humans and wildlife is born out of a perception that a certain species is dangerous to human life. This feeling gets accentuated when people have no knowledge about the species. There is no example in India where a large or medium carnivore has been successfully reintroduced after a gap of 50-100 years,” he reasons, in the context of cheetahs.

While we can’t be sure about the repercussions for India, data from Africa on cheetah-human conflicts can provide some context on possible conflicts. “In Africa, the most commonly reported forms of conflict involve livestock depredation by cheetahs, followed by retaliation leading to increased cheetah deaths,” says Dr Gopalaswamy. The Cheetah Conservation Fund, an international organisation in Namibia, reports that most of the cheetahs in Namibia, Botswana, and Tanzania live outside protected areas, and some of them are killed when they stray into villages.

“Cheetahs are timider than other big cats, which might lead to them coming into closer contact with people with consequences for both,” says Dr Karanth when asked about the implications of the reintroduction on local communities. The fact that the Kuno-Palpur National Park is a relatively tiny park with many people living on its fringes could make it an apt ground for possible conflicts. “While losses due to the cheetah may be lesser compared to the other three cats, the forest department will have to prepare the communities through very intensive and persistent awareness campaigns before and after their reintroduction to understand their attitude towards the new species and to help them cope with the species,” adds Dr Andheria. When steps like awareness campaigns, timely cash compensation for losses and providing guard dogs that can keep a watch on the livestock are taken, the reintroduction may be a better move. “The rise in tourism in the region can subsequently augment the local economy, benefiting local communities,” he opines.

As demonstrated over the years, human-wildlife conflict is a complicated issue that does not have a silver bullet. It is essential to consider possible repercussions in plans to reintroduce a predator in an ecosystem where it has not occurred for decades and have mechanisms to resolve any such conflicts in the future. As Dr Gopalaswamy puts it, “The idea is to welcome this species with love and respect and not have, knowingly, a hostile, stressful environment in place for them if and when they arrive”. With conservation and human lives possibly at stake, the cheetah reintroduction programme will be a closely-watched one.

(The author is with Research Matters)