New Delhi: The Union environment ministry told parliament this week that the Asiatic cheetah – once native to India – has become extinct “primarily due to hunting and habitat loss”. The animal was declared extinct in India in 1952.
The government is now planning to revive the cheetah population in the country. to import Animals of Namibia and South Africa “on an experimental basis”.
India deal sealed with Namibia on 20 July, and the government told parliament on Monday that it is “in an advanced stage of consultation with South Africa”.
This is not the first attempt to import cheetah into India. have been before Attempt to bring cheetahs from Iran, For example, there are records of erstwhile princely states bringing cattle from Africa.
A trip through the archives reveals that differing beliefs about the cheetah – from a key ally in hunting for the Mughal rulers of India to a less-than-favourable attitude to the British Raj – played a significant role in its dwindling numbers. played.
Cheetah in Mughal Era
Known as the fastest land animal, cheetahs are the smallest of the big cats. They are generally known to attack or hunt humans.
in your paper Lion, Cheetah and others in Mughal landscapeWildlife historian and conservationist Divyabhanusingh wrote that in the Mughal period there was a “significant” difference between the lion and the cheetah.
“The former was a commodity, the last item was royal game, to be sent in style when confronted. The cheetah, on the other hand, was to be captured and tamed as a tool of hunting (hunting),” he wrote.
Cheetahs were captured from the wild and trained (to hunt or chase) blackbuck, and according to Divyabhanusingh, was “taken with great care” by the Mughals.
He described in the paper how, in 1572, Akbar took a cheetah – named Chitra Nanjan – out for a hunting trip to what is now the area around Jaipur airport, and was so pleased with the animal’s display. Surprised he ordered it to be given to him. “A jewel studded collar and a drum were beaten in front of it”.
other records performance Akbar collected 9,000 cheetahs during his reign from 1556 to 1605.
Cheetahs were well spread across the subcontinent, preferring open grasslands and scrub forests as habitat, so they could run freely to chase their prey.
However, Raza Kazmi, another wildlife historian, noted that these habitats were also susceptible to land-use change to suit human needs.
“When India was ruled by dynasties and empires, the open land was the first to be brought under the plow. There was a great interest in bringing more and more land under agriculture,” he said, “but it is simultaneously true that the cheetah’s typical habitat had outlived its existence in some areas.”
India still has open grasslands and scrub forests, regardless of their size. shrink,
Conservationists say that one factor that played a major role in the decline of the cheetah population in the Mughal and post-Mughal era was the lack of breeding.
Cheetahs are extremely difficult to breed in captivity. one in composite paper From 2019, tracing the extinction of cheetahs in India, Divyabhanusingh and Kazmi found “the first and only 20th-century example of cheetah breeding in captivity anywhere in the world”. It was recorded by Emperor Jahangir in 1613.
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in the British era
By the time the British arrived in India, the population of Asiatic cheetahs in India was already declining.
Mahesh Rangarajan, environmental historian and president of the Ashoka Archives of Contemporary India at Ashoka University, says that after the arrival of the British, attitudes towards cheetahs changed somewhat.
“Unlike South Asia, the British had a very different history of relations with large wild mammals. In much of Europe, there were concerted campaigns against specific animals,” he wrote in the book. nature and nation,
While big cats such as lions and tigers were seen as challenging sport to kill, smaller animals, including cheetahs, were seen as “insects to kill”.
“Cheetahs were not considered a very prized sport because they did not pose such a great danger to humans. They were also not that large in size, so they were not considered trophies,” Rangarajan told ThePrint.
Rangarajan too found it A large number of cheetahs were hunted by the colonial administration, with rewards ranging from 6 rupees for cubs to 18 rupees for an adult. According to his research, the average number of cheetahs killed for the prize between 1870 and 1925 was 1.2 per year. This is higher than the number of cheetahs killed and speared between 1800 and 1950, for a total of 127 or a statistical average of less than one a year.
“Reward-hunting, therefore, may have intensified, if not caused, its decline in many areas where it still survives. Given the relatively low densities at which it existed, even that removing a small number of animals could adversely affect the ability of a wild population to reproduce even at the minimum level required for survival,” they wrote in a paper. published In Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society in 1998.
To replenish the dwindling numbers of cheetahs, some princely states began importing cheetahs from Africa in the first half of the 20th century. According to Divyabhanusingh and Kazmi, the first recorded practice was in 1918 and the practice continued until the early 1950s.
return to the wild
popular image Maharaja Ramanuj Pratap Singh Deo of Surguja since 1947, standing on his feet with his gun in the form of three dead leopards, is widely believed For being among the last three Asiatic cheetahs in India.
However, Kazmi had seen a cheetah in Jharkhand as late as 1975.
Now India is set to acquire a new set of cheetahs from Namibia and South Africa, but whether their numbers will ever increase enough to be introduced into the wild is a question that only time will tell.
“African biologists have managed to keep some cheetahs in captivity, and are confident that their protocols can be adopted in India as well. It is possible that they may adapt to their new habitat and their numbers may stabilize,” Kazmi said.
“But can we establish free cheetah meta-populations that can move freely in connected landscapes like other big cats? I can’t be so sure,” he said.
(Edited by Polomi Banerjee)
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