COMPAS.com – fastest land animal, cheetah will return to India after being declared extinct in the country 70 years ago.

Reported from BBCat least 20 cheetah came to India from South Africa and Namibia, home to more than a third of the world’s 7,000 cheetahs.

The first batch of eight cheetahs – five females and three males, aged two to six – arrived from Windhoek in Namibia to the Indian city of Gwalior on Saturday (17/9/2022).

Cheetahs previously shared their habitat in India with other big cats such as lions and tigers, but the fastest land animal died out 70 years ago.

The cheetah is the fastest land animal in the world, capable of running at speeds of up to 113 km/h.

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Indian Cheetah Restoration Efforts

A group of cheetahs imported from Namibia were accompanied by wildlife experts, veterinarians and three biologists on their transcontinental trip aboard a modified Boeing 747.

From Gwalior, the cheetahs were flown by helicopter to the former national park in Madhya Pradesh state, where they were released by a delegation led by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The former national park covers 289 square miles and is a prey-filled sanctuary for big cats, such as antelopes and wild boars.

An electric enclosure, with 10 compartments and varying sizes, was built as a quarantine area for the cheetahs before being released into the wild.

Each cheetah will be assigned a team of volunteers who will monitor and supervise the animal’s movements. Satellite radio collars were also attached to each cheetah to determine their geolocation.

Read also: Is it true that a cheetah’s body gets hot when it runs fast?

India has made efforts to reintroduce the cheetah since the 1950s.

Previous attempts in the 1970s to bring cheetahs from Iran failed, after the Shah of Iran was ousted from power and negotiations broke down.

History of cheetahs in India

reported from Indian Expressthe cheetah is the only large carnivore that has become extinct in India, mainly due to hunting and habitat loss.

Maharaja Ramanuj Pratap Singh Deo of Korea, Madhya Pradesh is said to have killed the last three recorded cheetahs in India in 1947.

Then, in 1952, the Indian government officially declared that the fastest land animal had disappeared from the country.

So what caused the cheetah to go extinct in India?

For centuries, hunting has been the favorite activity of the royal family in India. The cheetah, which is relatively easy to tame compared to tigers, was often used by Indian royalty for sport hunting.

The earliest available record of cheetahs being used for hunting in India comes from the 12th century Sanskrit text Manasollasa, written by the ruler Kalyani Chalukya Someshvara III (reigned 1127-1138 AD).

The use of trained cheetahs for hunting, according to wildlife expert Divyabhanusinh, was a highly specialized activity in medieval times and practiced on a large scale during the Mughal Empire.

Emperor Akbar, who reigned from 1556 to 1605, was very fond of the activity and is said to have amassed 9,000 cheetahs in total.

Abul Fazl, the head of Akbar’s court, noted that the emperor had devised a new method for capturing cheetahs.

In the past, people would dig a deep hole to trap a cheetah, but sometimes a cheetah’s leg is broken due to this.

Akbar reportedly solved the problem by digging a shallow hole with an automatic trapdoor that would close once the cheetah fell inside.

Captured cheetahs are then trained to join the hunt. and according to Abul Fazl, the process of training the animals takes 3-4 months.

Emperor Jahangir (reigned 1605-1627) followed in his father’s footsteps and is said to have captured over 400 antelopes at Pargana Palam – a site near New Delhi International Airport today – with the help of cheetahs trained.

Divyabhanusinh notes that the demand for cheetahs for hunting purposes is so high that certain areas, which have high populations, are designated for their capture, such as Jodhpur and Jhunjhunu in Rajasthan, Bathinda in Punjab and Hisar in Haryana.

The capture of wild cheetahs for hunting and the difficulty of breeding in captivity led to a decline in the cheetah population, even before the British entry.

Almost extinct under British colonization

Unlike the Mughal Empire, Britain was not particularly interested in cheetahs. Instead, they prefer to hunt big game, such as tigers, bulls, and elephants.

Under British colonial rule, forests were extensively cleared to develop settlements and establish indigo, tea and coffee plantations. This has further resulted in the loss of the big cat’s habitat, contributing to its decline.

Although tigers are the animal of choice for hunting, Indian and British hunters still target cheetahs.

There is evidence to suggest that British authorities considered the animal a “pest” and handed out cash prizes for killing cheetahs, from at least 1871.

In Sindh, the reward for killing a baby cheetah is 6 rupees and 12 rupees for an adult cheetah.

Environmental historian Mahesh Rangarajan argues that the administrative policies of the British Raj played “a major role in the extermination of (cheetahs) in India”.

Rewards for bounty hunting will likely result in fewer cheetahs, as even removing a small number will negatively affect the wild cheetah’s ability to reproduce.

As a result, wild cheetahs became extremely rare in India in the 20th century.

The population is decreasing

Unlike the British, India’s elite and state rulers continued the ancient practice of hunting cheetahs into the 1920s.

Eminent personalities among them were Maharaja Kolhapur and Maharaja Bhavnagar. However, at that time, it was increasingly difficult to find cheetahs in the wild.

While it was thought to be the first transcontinental migration of a large carnivore to India, Divyabhanusinh argues that the purchase of cheetahs from Africa took place in the 20th century.

He said Bhavnagar and Kolhapur states were major importers of cheetahs between 1918 and 1939.

Just before the start of World War I, Maharaja Bhavsinhji II, who ruled Bhavnagar State from 1896 to 1919, sent his police inspector, Krishna Chandra Sinh to Kenya to buy a cheetah. In the 1930s, Bhavnagar state reportedly had 32 imported cheetahs.

Cheetahs continued to be imported into India in small numbers after the country’s independence, mainly for exhibits in zoos. Between 1949 and 1989, about seven zoos had 25 cheetahs, all from overseas.

Divyabhanusinh noted that almost all were most likely from Africa.

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