Not possible for India to reintroduce Asian cheetah: South African expert

It would be impossible for India to reintroduce the Asiatic cheetahs because there are only a few left and that is why it had to choose South African cheetahs, according to a leading expert here. Vincent van der Merwe, a veterinarian who is closely involved in the project which will see 12 South African cheetahs land at Gwalior Air Force base on Saturday morning, explained that there were only about 30 to 40 Asian cheetahs left in the Asia region, all of them in Iran.

"So, it would be impossible for India to take cheetahs from Asia for this reintroduction because there are a few left. Maybe one day we might be able to save the Asiatic cheetah. It's a very different-looking cheetah, but this is a species that is essentially at the end of the run," he said.

Van der Merwe said the Asian cheetah had once been endemic to all of Asia but had been rendered extinct through centuries of agricultural growth encroaching on their territory.

Speaking at a briefing in rural Limpopo province on Thursday night ahead of an event where the cheetahs were being prepared for the flight from O R Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg on Friday evening to be sent to India, van der Merwe said they were aware that India has a lot of predators that the local cheetah would never have come across before.

"So, we have selected our very best cheetah for relocation. These are animals that know what to do when they encounter lions. These animals are out there to get them and they are vigilant to the presence of these predators. They immediately know that they must move in the opposite direction. The cheetah that we are sending to India will know what to do," he said.

Being the fastest land animal on earth, no predator has a chance of catching a running cheetah.

"We want wild and functional cheetahs introduced into India. They must know what to do when they see lions or leopards, because these are the predators that they are going to encounter in India, alongside sloth bears, wolves for the first time, and Indian wild dogs," said Van der Merwe.

Adrian Tordiffe, Associate Professor and Veterinary Wildlife Specialist at the University of Pretoria, who has also been deeply involved in the project, explained the cheetahs were sedated and brought in from their holding fenced areas to receive vaccination and other medication before being revived in the crates in which they would be transported to India.

"When we are translocating animals, we want to make sure that we are not reintroducing any disease into the wildlife population in India and at the same time we want to make sure that whatever they are going to be exposed to in India is not going to detrimentally affect them," Tordiffe said.

Tordiffe was also very complimentary of the Indian team that he and his team had worked with.

"There so many lessons that we can learn from them in terms of how they deal with human-wildlife conflict and the way they manage their open system parks, which we are very scared of doing (in South Africa)," he said.

Tordiffe was referring to the fact that India's reserves are mainly open, where animals can roam free, often with human settlements adjacent to them. South Africa's reserves are all fenced in.

"It has been absolutely wonderful working with what I consider some of the best carnivore conservationists in the world. My colleagues in India have done a marvellous job at the conservation of the tiger. Their tiger population has also doubled in the last ten years," Tordiffe said.

Dr Amit Mallick, Inspector-General of the National Tiger Conservation Authority, shared his optimism about the South African cheetah adapting to the Indian condition.