India’s cheetah relocation programme

India’s cheetah relocation programme

Why in news:

• As more deaths of cheetahs have been reported last week from the Kuno National Park (KNP), Madhya Pradesh, an expert committee charged with managing the Project Cheetah programme has recommended that all animals undergo a thorough medical review.

• Five of the translocated animals and three of four cubs born in India have died.

What is Project Cheetah?

Project Cheetah is India’s cheetah relocation programme and is perhaps among the most ambitious of its kind in the world.

• The attempt is to, over the next decade, bring in 5­10 animals every year until a self-sustaining population of about 35 cheetahs is established.
• Unlike cheetahs in South Africa and Namibia that are living in fenced reserves, India’s plan is to have them grow in natural, unfenced, wild conditions.
• As of today, 11 of the translocated cheetahs are in the true wild with four in specially designed one­square­kilometre enclosures called ‘bomas,’ to help the animals acclimatise to Indian conditions.

Why the need for a medical review?

• One of the cheetahs, nicknamed Surya, was found dead in KNP last week.
• Veterinarians examining the animal saw a wound on its neck, infected with maggots.
• The larvae of the maggots were also found on the radio­collar fitted onto the cheetah’s neck.
• There was a chance that chafing from the collar may have indirectly sickened the cheetah.
• The collars that the cheetahs wear are made from polystyrene and equipped with a radio­frequency tracking chip that helps monitor the animals.
• There is also a hypothesis that via the wound the African animal may have been exposed to parasites that Indian big­cats are usually resistant too.

About Cheetah:

• The cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) is a large cat native to Africa and central Iran.
• It is the fastest land animal, capable of running at 80 to 98 km/h.
• The cheetah lives in three main social groups:  females and their cubs, male “coalitions”, and solitary males.
• While females lead a nomadic life searching for prey in large home ranges, males are more sedentary and instead establish much smaller territories in areas with plentiful prey and access to females.
• The cheetah is active during the day, with peaks during dawn and dusk.
• It breeds throughout the year.
• After a gestation of nearly three months, a litter of typically three or four cubs is born.
• Cheetah cubs are highly vulnerable to predation by other large carnivores such as hyenas and lions.
• The cheetah occurs in a variety of habitats such as savannahs in the Serengeti, arid mountain ranges in the Sahara and hilly desert terrain in Iran.
• In 1952, Asiatic cheetah was declared extinct from India, after decades of human intervention, hunting and habitat degradation.
• Historically ranging throughout most of Sub-Saharan Africa and extending eastward into the Middle East and to central
• The cheetah is now distributed mainly in small, fragmented populations in central Iran and southern, eastern and northwestern Africa.
• Asiatic cheetah is classified as a “critically endangered” species by the IUCN Red List, and is believed to survive only in Iran.
• The African cheetah is spread out across Africa from Northwest Africa, East Africa, and Southern Africa.
• With a bigger territory, the African cheetahs have higher populations compared to Asiatic cheetahs.
• They are categorized as Vulnerable in the IUCN Red List.

Syllabus: Prelims; Environment