Bullish on India | How cheetahs could run the long distance to 2047 in India

While male cheetahs are territorial, female cheetahs typically have a large home range. (Photo by Michael M via Pexels)

“Survival of wildlife, world over, is solely in the hands of man." Nawabzada Saad Bin Jung - a wildlife enthusiast and eco-tourism advocate who runs a wildlife resort on the banks of Kabini river in Karnataka - says this is the fundamental problem all wildlife conservationists must confront.

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"At what stage in time we drifted from being an integral part of the animal kingdom to becoming the keepers of the same, is a difficult question to answer. I fear this happened many centuries ago when we developed weapons against which the wilderness had no answers. Evolution certainly was unfair to the animal world as it gave us a lopsided advantage over the rest,” he adds.

Stories of species extinction are being told all over the world. At one stage, the tiger was in grave danger of extinction in India, till a protection act was enacted by the Indian government in the 1970s which led to the revival of the Bengal tiger in the country. But it was too late for another cat - the last Indian cheetahs are thought to have been shot in 1947 - they were declared extinct in India by 1952.

In September 2022, eight cheetahs were flown in from Namibia with fanfare. In February 2023, an additional 12 cheetahs were brought to Madhya Pradesh from South Africa. "This move had the blessings of Delhi and suddenly an unknown Kuno became the centre of attention,” says Jung.

He has a simple suggestion which could be the right track for cheetahs to be able to live in the wild in India: We can certainly take the cheetah from Namibia and relocate it successfully in Central India, he says. But "the cheetah is not a territorial animal like the tiger, it needs hundreds of kilometres to move in, it needs a healthy prey base and suitable open lands to hunt in. It needs villagers to embrace it. And for the villagers to embrace it, we need to make drastic changes to our policies and laws. India is still in the grip of protection-based laws, which sadly infuses a regressive exclusionary mindset. We need to embrace inclusion-based conservation, embrace every villager around Kuno and around every protected forest of ours. I hope and pray this happens because there is nothing better I would like to see than the revival of the cheetah in our own endless plains of Central India. It is paramount that the villagers bless the cheetah. For that to happen, the administration has to bless the villagers. Give them the basic amenities of life. Give them revenue from the wilderness that surrounds them. Let them believe that the wilderness belongs to them, and they to the wilderness. Let the villagers become the protectors and conservators of our immense and diverse eco-biospheres."

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