Top expert accompanying animals says human conflict biggest worry in India
Written by ABC AUDIO on September 16, 2022
On Friday, five female and three male African cheetahs will set off on an over 10-hour, 8,000-km transcontinental journey to their new home in India. And among those making the journey on the Boeing 747 jet is one of the world’s leading experts on cheetahs, Dr Laurie Marker, who says managing a human-animal conflict will be the biggest challenge in India.
Read in Explained |How cheetahs went extinct in India, and the plan to reintroduce them into the wild
Aged between two and six years, the cheetahs are currently being kept in a “boma”, a small fenced camp, for quarantine and treatment at the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) centre in Namibia’s Otjiwarongo. Each animal has been vaccinated, fitted with a satellite collar, and given an extensive health check-up.
Explained |What it takes to successfully move big cats like cheetahs out of their natural habitats
The modified Boeing cargo plane will leave Hosea Kutako International Airport in Namibia’s capital city of Windhoek and land in Jaipur airport by daybreak on September 17.
It is in Kuno where the real work will begin, Dr Marker, who is also CCF Founder and Executive Director, told The Indian Express.
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The American expert has been an advisor to the Indian government on the cheetah relocation project over the past 12 years, and CCF has been in charge of the project on behalf of the Namibian government.
“As much as 77 per cent of the cheetahs in Africa actually live in regions outside Protected Areas — and the reason they have been able to co-exist with minimal human-animal conflict is not just because the cheetah is not an aggressive animal, unlike lions or tigers, but also because of the awareness programmes that the governments have created in educating farmers on how to handle cheetahs. Since cheetahs do attack livestock, the biggest threat to the cheetah I would say, and to conservation projects like reintroduction in India, is from farmers trying to defend their livestock. But there are methods to deal with this, including keeping herders, guardian dogs, and keeping livestock healthy and strong so they don’t get picked up by cheetahs,’’ said Dr Marker.
“While we have carried out numerous projects of rewilding cheetahs across Africa since the 1990s, this is the first time such a trans-continental project like this is taking off. And it is of great importance to the global conservation of the cheetah, which is critically endangered in many parts. The cheetah has gone extinct in a number of countries due to human activity, so it is our responsibility to ensure that it is brought back and preserved. Of course the ideal situation would be to conserve animals because re-introduction is a difficult and long process. But once an animal becomes extinct, this is the only way,” said Dr Marker.
The arriving cheetahs, which include two male siblings, have been selected based on an assessment of their health, disposition, hunting skills, and ability to contribute genetics that will result in a strong founder population.
