Cheetah Reintroduction Plan in India Neglects Spatial Ecology: Researchers

Researchers have said that the released animals may come into conflict with people in the neighbouring villages as the introduction of African cheetahs to India was planned without considering their spatial ecology.

Contiguous ecology addresses the fundamental effects of space on the movement of individual species and on the stability of multispecies communities.

According to reports as many as 20 cheetahs from Namibia and South Africa were introduced to Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh last year to establish a free-ranging population. This was for the first time since their extinction in India 70 years ago.

Scientists of the Cheetah Research Project of Leibniz-IZW in Namibia argue that in southern Africa, cheetahs live in a stable socio-spatial system with widely spread territories and densities of less than one individual per 100 square kilometres.

The plan for cheetahs in Kuno National Park assumes that the high prey density will sustain high cheetah densities, even though there is no evidence for that, they said.

In a letter published in the journal Conservation Science and Practice on Thursday, researchers noted that as Kuno National Park is small, it is likely that the released animals will move far beyond the park’s boundaries and cause conflicts with neighboring villages.

Kuno National Park is an unfenced wilderness area of approximately 17 by 44 kilometres.

Based on a calculation of the local prey density, it was calculated that 21 adult cheetahs could be sustained by the prey base in Kuno National Park, equivalent to a density of about three individuals per 100 square kilometres.

Based on their research results from a long-term study of the spatial behaviour of cheetahs in Namibia, as well as comparable work in East Africa, scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Leibniz-IZW warn against overestimating the carrying capacity of the area.

The carrying capacity is usually between 0.2 and 1 adult per 100 square kilometers for cheetahs under natural conditions. This is true not only for Namibia but also for the ecologically very different conditions in the Serengeti ecosystem in East Africa which has a much higher density of prey, they said.

According to reports, the team composed predictions about the dimensional behavior of cheetahs in their new habitat. They identified controversial issues and hidden core presumptions of the reintroduction plan. These assumptions ignore important aspects of the cheetah socio-spatial system.

The researchers further noted that male cheetahs follow two different spatial tactics. Territory holders occupy territories consisting of a collection of important communication hotspots.

They also mentioned that males without territories (“floaters”) move and live between existing territories, as do females, with occasional forays into territories to access important information at marking sites.

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