Cheetahs: Their Mughal connection, and how they went extinct in India

Today (September 17), on his 72nd birthday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will release cheetahs in Kuno National Park, Madhya Pradesh, as part of the Union government’s efforts to revitalise and diversify India’s wildlife and its habitat.

Eight cheetahs were brought to Jaipur in Rajasthan from Namibia in Africa in a cargo aircraft as part of an inter-continental translocation project and flown to the Kuno-Palpur National Park (KPNP) in Sheopur district. Cheetahs have returned to India after 70 years.

Also read: Cheetahs are landing in India for Modi’s birthday; all you need to know

Why cheetahs are brought from Africa

The cheetah, the fastest land animal, was declared extinct in India in 1952. The cheetahs have been brought from Namibia under an MoU signed earlier this year.

The reintroduction of cheetahs in India is being done under ‘Project Cheetah’, which, according to the government, is the world’s first inter-continental large wild carnivore translocation project.

As per the directions of the Supreme Court in 2020, the cheetah reintroduction in India is being overseen by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC), guided and directed by the committee of experts designated by the Supreme Court.

According to the government, cheetahs will help in the restoration of open forest and grassland ecosystems in India and this will help conserve biodiversity and enhance the ecosystem services like water security, carbon sequestration and soil moisture conservation, benefiting the society at large.

Also read: India undoing ecological wrong by bringing back cheetahs: Bhupender Yadav

Discussions to bring cheetahs back to India were initiated in 2009 by the Wildlife Trust of India. Experts from across the world, officials of the Government of India (GoI) including the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change and representatives of the state governments met and decided to conduct site surveys to explore the reintroduction potential.

Former cheetah range states – Gujarat, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, were prioritised.

Reasons for cheetahs’ extinction in India

“Despite the immense and ever-mounting demographic pressure, India has lost only one large wild mammalian species since the country’s independence in 1947. And if the Javan (Rhinoceros sondaicus inermis) and the Sumatran (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis lasiotis) rhinoceroses, which in any case had peripheral existence in the eastern extremity of the country, be excluded, India has not lost a large mammalian species in historical times, barring one – the cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus),” the government’s ‘Action Plan for Introduction of Cheetah in India’ report stated.

Watch: India prepares to reintroduce Cheetahs after seven decades

“The animal, charismatic in its own right, therefore, also has a very special significance for the national conservation ethic and ethos. The very name of the animal ‘cheetah’ originates from Sanskrit meaning ‘the spotted one’ and Neolithic cave paintings in central India depict the cheetah,” it added.

A special bird touches down in the Land of the Brave to carry goodwill ambassadors to the Land of the Tiger.#AmritMahotsav #IndiaNamibia pic.twitter.com/vmV0ffBncO

— India In Namibia (@IndiainNamibia) September 14, 2022

Further, it stated that the historical range of cheetahs in India encompassed the entire country except the high mountains, coasts and the northeast region; from west of Bengal in the east to west of Pakistan into Afghanistan and Iran in the west and from Punjab in the north to north western Tamil Nadu in the South.

As per the report, the main reasons for the decline of cheetah in India were large-scale capture of animals from the wild for coursing, bounty and sport hunting, extensive habitat conversion along with a consequent decline in prey base.

The last cheetahs in the wild were recorded in 1948 when three cheetahs were shot in the Sal (Shorea robusta) forests of Koriya district, Chhattisgarh state with a few sporadic reports from central and Deccan regions till the mid-1970s.

However, according to wildlife expert Divyabhanusinh, the Maharajah of the state of Koriya shot the last three cheetahs seen in India in 1947.

Also read: Jairam Ramesh shares the inside story of cheetahs’ homecoming

In his book The End of a Trail: The Cheetah in India, Divyabhanusinh said that 300 years earlier the Mughal emperor Akbar had a collection of 1,000 cheetahs and his son Jehangir wrote that Akbar had owned 9,000 cheetahs during his lifetime. Akbar as a 13-year-old, was first introduced to hunting with a cheetah in 1555 AD.

According to the author, these cheetahs were used by the Mughals to hunt blackbuck antelopes and gazelles. Hunting with cheetahs was a favourite sport of the Mughals. The British in India were not interested in hunting with the cheetahs.

Cheetahs in Indian zoos

At present, cheetahs are present in three zoos in Karnataka’s Mysuru, Hyderabad in Telangana and Gujarat’s Jamnagar.

As per the government, among large carnivores, conflict with human interests is lowest for cheetahs, as they are not a threat to humans and usually do not attack large livestock.

Also read: Cheetah reintroduction: All but one village in Kuno national park resettled, say officials

“Bringing back a top predator restores historic evolutionary balance resulting in cascading effects on various levels of the ecosystem leading to better management and restoration of wildlife habitat (grasslands, scrublands and open forest ecosystems), conservation of cheetah’s prey and sympatric endangered species and a top-down effect of a large predator that enhances and maintains the diversity in lower trophic levels of the ecosystems,” it said.

“The main goal of Cheetah reintroduction project in India is to establish viable cheetah metapopulation in India that allows the cheetah to perform its functional role as a top predator and provides space for the expansion of the cheetah within its historical range thereby contributing to its global conservation efforts,” it added.