India’s cheetah plan recipe for conflict

India’s cheetah plan recipe for conflict

Subject: Environment

Section: Species in news

Context: Project Cheetah overestimated the carrying capacity of Kuno National Park and did not factor in the unique spatial requirement of the species before flying in 20 spotted cats from Africa, according to a group of Namibian researchers.

Findings of Namibian Researchers:

• In southern Africa, cheetahs live in a stable socio-spatial system with widely spread territories and densities of less than one individual per 100 km².
  • Therefore, the carrying capacity is usually between 0.2 and 1 adult per 100 km² for cheetahs under natural conditions.
• The plan for cheetahs in KNP assumes that the high prey density will sustain high cheetah densities, even though there is no evidence for that.
  • It also ignores important aspects of the cheetah socio-spatial system.
  • Spatial ecology addresses the fundamental effects of space on the movement of individual species and on the stability of multispecies communities.
• As KNP is small, it is likely that the released animals will move far beyond the park’s boundaries and cause conflicts with neighboring village
  • Kuno National Park is an unfenced wilderness area of approximately 17 by 44 kilometers (about 750 km²).
  • Based on a calculation of the local prey density, it was calculated that 21 adult cheetahs could be sustained by the prey base in Kuno National Park—equivalent to a density of about three individuals per 100 km².
• In Namibia, territories are larger and prey density lower, in East Africa territories are smaller and prey density higher—but the distance between territories is a constant and no new territories are established in between. For the reintroduction plan in Kuno National Park, these distances were ignored.
• Already with the cheetahs transferred from Namibia in autumn 2022, including three males, the carrying capacity of Kuno National Park has been reached in terms of the cheetahs’ territorial system.

Name of Cheetah translocated from South Africa:

• 12 cheetahs (7 male and 5 female) translocated from South Africa in the second phase under the reintroduction of ‘Project Cheetahs’ have also been given Indian names. They have been renamed Daksha, Nirva, Vayu, Agni, Gamini, Tejas, Veera, Suraj, Dheera, Uday, Prabhas and Pavak.

Incidents so far:

• Straying outside National Park: Forest officials rescued a male cheetah that strayed out of the conservation area of Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh last week. As per reports, this is the second time in a month when the Cheetah named Oban has been tranquilised and brought back to the national park after it strayed out of the park.
• Sasha, died of a kidney ailment on March 27.
• One of the cheetahs ‘Uday’ which was aged six years, translocated to Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park (KNP) from South Africa died on April 23.
• Another cheetah, named Siyaya, recently gave birth to four cubs.

Cheetah Reintroduction Plan: https://optimizeias.com/cheetah-reintroduction-in-india/

Cheetah: https://optimizeias.com/asiatic-cheetah/