I have been hearing about bringing cheetah's from Iran for a long time. Finally, that has been dropped as we could not get atleast a pair of Asiatic Cheetahs from Iran. Now, that idea has been twisted and it is being contemplated to get the African cheetah for introduction in India.

I disagree with this idea of introducing African cheetah in India. It is a grand plan like many of the muddle headed large projects. Offlate, we have taken a fancy to large projects - grandiose dreams hog all the attention, however ill conceived they may be. The African Cheetah introduction experiment is one of those.

I agree that the word cheetah has been derived from Sanskrit. However, the African cheetah is an exotic species.

I am surprised by the talk of Asiatic and African cheetah being a single species. Just a few months back our WII scientists had said that tigers should not be brought from Madhya Pradesh to Rajasthan. And a strange reason was given. It was said that they belong to two different species. The jungles of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan were contiguous till the last few decades. If a few decades of separation can ensure a species acquire distinct characteristics then I don’t understand why thousands of years of separation can’t make the Asiatic cheetah as a separate species. To those who have forgotten geography, I would like to remind you that Africa and Asia got separated after the break up of Gondwana land.

The African cheetah was never a part of this landscape. So it should not be a part of this landscape.

Also since it was never a part of this landscape, we should not use the word reintroduction.

The proponents of this project say that it will help in habitat protection. I disagree. How many square kms of habitat are we talking? We simply don’t have grasslands bigger than 30-40 Sq. kms. And if we are thinking of having a project in such a small area than it is like a small safari in a zoo. And if you seriously want to create grasslands than go to an infamous place like Kalahandi, acquire the unused land and create a suitable grassland habitat. It would take several years of course. Unfortunately, we don’t have to ability and will power to execute such an idea. And if we had the ability to do it, I would still oppose it as it is an exotic species.

It is said that introduction of African cheetah would lead to better protection of the existing species. There are existing projects like Project Tiger, Project Elephant etc. We do have sanctuaries after particular species. However, we don't pay attention to the existing protected areas. Don't understand how introduction of African Cheetah can break this apathy.

The proponents of the African cheetah introduction have branded the opposition to it as coming from the “tiger lobby”. Frankly speaking by branding all opposition as tiger lobby, people are trying to hide the structural deficiencies in our conservation efforts.

A charismatic species like the Tiger is on the brink. So definitely Cheetah can’t succeed where tiger has failed in overcoming the structural issues. For eg. Where is the protection?

Who is protecting? Our frontline guard force, foresters, rangers etc are old. Half of the posts are lying vacant. A number of places also require more manpower than the sanctioned capacity. They don’t get their salaries in time. They are demotivated, ill equipped. Who is looking into this basic issue?

In our federal setup, the forests are under the control of the states. It is laughable when one state doesn’t allow translocation of a species to a forest in another state. Rather than accepting the risk of failure, our esteemed WII officials come out with theories that tigers in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh are of different species. We haven’t been able to save the Asiatic lion. Gujarat is not willing to give a few lions from Gir to be translocated to Madhya Pradesh. Even though that is vital for the survival of lions in this country.

Our forest department is still oriented with the colonial hangover of calculating our forest wealth in terms of cubic feet of timber. Too often we resort to cheap gimmicks rather than ecologically sound plans. The few scientists of repute in this country are mostly depending upon their studies for support rather than illumination – the way a drunken person uses the lamp posts.

I would like to quote the late Kailash Sankhala here: “ We seem to forget the fact that nature cannot be protected by chanting Vedic mantras or celebrating ‘Vana Mahotsava’ and National Wildlife Weeks, nor by building mathematical models and writing glossy management plans, nor by making formal declarations of intent in quick succession….”

Gimmicks like African Cheetah introduction doesn’t help in our conservation and should not be a part of our vision. We have better things to do like energising our frontline protection force, creating ecologically sound management plans and implementing those, prosecution of poachers, restoration of wildlife corridors, relocation of villages from the forest and resettling the villagers, creating a dedicated wildlife department etc, than get swayed by such gimmicks.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi