Not enough space for cheetahs, say wildlife scientists

Eight wildlife scientists warned on Wednesday that the plan to introduce African cheetahs into India is "an ill-advised conservation attempt" that hinges on an "unsubstantiated claim" that the country has sufficient and suitable space for cheetahs.

The scientists said India's cheetah reintroduction plan has adopted a "speculative and unscientific approach" that they anticipate will lead to human-cheetah conflicts or deaths of the introduced cheetahs and undermine science-based species recovery efforts.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had released five female and three male cheetahs from Namibia in Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh last month. Indian wildlife officials have said Kuno has an abundance of prey - chital, antelope, chinkara, boar, nilgai, rhesus macaques and grey langur - that makes it a suitable site for reintroducing the cheetah, the only large carnivore that has gone extinct from India since Independence.

But the eight researchers have expressed concern that the reintroduction plan has ignored critical scientific insights into how much space free-ranging cheetahs require and made flawed assumptions about Kuno's cheetah carrying capacity.

The calculated carrying capacity of three cheetahs per 100sqkm for Kuno was based on an out-of-date density estimate from Namibia, but studies of free-ranging cheetah populations in eastern Africa show that one cheetah would require at least 100sqkm.

"This flawed assumption could prove to be a costly mistake," said Arjun Gopalaswamy, a wildlife and statistical ecologist and chief scientist at Carnassails Global, a Bangalore-based firm that has provided scientific advisory services to conservation efforts in Africa and Asia.

Gopalaswamy is the lead author of a letter published on Wednesday in the research journal Nature Ecology and Evolution articulating concerns about the cheetah reintroduction plan and urging wildlife authorities to revise the plan using a science-based approach.

Neither Kuno, which is only 748sqkm, unfenced, with about 500 feral cattle and is surrounded by a forested landscape with 169 human settlements, nor other landscapes considered are of the size and quality to permit self-sustaining and viable cheetah populations, the scientists have said.

The eight cheetahs from Namibia are currently confined within a fenced-in enclosure but are intended to be set free to roam and hunt prey across Kuno. But the cheetahs are likely to move beyond the park's boundaries and encounter livestock, and people.

"This poorly conceived plan has no chance of establishing a viable self-sustaining population of free ranging cheetahs. it is likely to fail given habitat quality constraints and socio-economic pressures," said Ulhas Karanth, co-author and emeritus scientist at the Centre for Wildlife Studies, Bangalore.

The scientists said it is unclear why the reintroduction plan initiated by the Union environment ministry and guided by the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, a government research centre, had disregarded scientific research on how much space free-ranging cheetahs require.

"I don't see logic or scientific reasoning in the way the plan is being implemented," said Ravi Chellam, another co-author and wildlife biologist and coordinator of the Biodiversity Collaborative, a network of institutions working to promote biodiversity science and its connections to human well-being.

The scientists have called for a radical revision of the reintroduction plan that takes into account the actual carrying capacity of available areas and is preceded by efforts to secure India's grasslands and suitable wild prey for cheetahs.

"India's potential cheetah habitat, grasslands and savannas, continue to be legally misclassified as wasteland and only five per cent of such open ecosystems are legally protected," said Abi Vanak, a co-author and scientist specialising in carnivores at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Bangalore.

"Given the current rapid loss of such habitat, in 10 years time when cheetahs are ready to expand, there won't be habitat left. We need policy reforms at the national and local level to secure grasslands and savannas."

The letter's other co-authors are Leili Kalatbari in Portugal, Gus Mills in South Africa, David Thuo in Australia, and Femke Broekhuis in the Netherlands.