Cheetah Reintroduction in India

[Matias]

(09-01-2022, 04:22 AM)Horizon Wrote: Thanks Ashutosh, for explaining. If Namibia and SA could assist India by sharing their Cheetahs, why can’t India create and increase Asiatic lion’s habitat within itself at least? This thinking beats me. Reading this, I can infer some conclusions that are best not to share. As you are aware, there was an outbreak not too long ago that brought Asiatic lion’s population down. India Markets itself as the land of tiger, but would be great if they could try to make it a land of tiger and lion.

It is necessary to know multiple points to compose a more rational picture of the problem that India faces in “choosing” to keep dangerous predators in close proximity to its rural population.

India cannot increase its land devoted to wild animals because it does not have it. What it currently has is the result of many translocations and indemnities, making it difficult for people to survive, increasing poverty, the cost of land, without the due economic compensation that photographic tourism promises to bring. Conservation is a burden on people, this is the landscape that needs to be changed.

The outbreak of canine distemper (shared/associated with other pathogens) is a cyclical phenomenon – arising from natural causes + stress experienced by lions in the affected geographic area. The susceptibility is not uniformly and geographically so broad – this is what has been seen over the last few decades. Despite being a worrying phenomenon, it has not yet dropped the population of Asian lions and is unlikely to do so, due to the expansion of the territorial range of lions that have been rising in recent years over a vast territory of approximately three million hectares, within of the state of Gujarat. This expansion mediated and encouraged by the Government of this State is its effective and assertive response against disease outbreaks and other stressors. Expanding the range of lions to small reserves, where there is no ecological sustainability or even genetic improvement, is not conservation. It is the same result obtained by two or three theme parks that have them and promote their tourist ownership. The best chance for these lions to remain alive and free to roam in the long term is in the state of Gujarat itself. Reply