(Image credit: Ehsan Kamali)
The critically endangered Asiatic cheetah once ranged across many nations from the Arabian peninsula to South Asia. The subspecies Acinonyx jubatus venaticus diverged from African cheetahs somewhere between between 32,000 and 67,000 years ago, according to genetic studies. Rulers in Asia once captured cheetahs to use them as swift hunting dogs. But the cheetah population declined drastically in the 20th century due to habitat loss, hunting, lack of prey, and traffic accidents. The only population of Asiatic cheetahs left in the wild are in Iran, where there are thought to be only nine males and three females left as of last year.
(Image credit: Azadeh Torkaman)
Cheetahs are notoriously hard to breed in captivity. Attempts to breed the Asiatic cheetah have seen dismal results. The only Asiatic cheetahs born in captivity were three cubs delivered via cesarian section in Tehran, Iran, in 2022. The mother (named Iran) had been rescued from a trafficking situation and was raised in captivity. Iran rejected the cubs, most likely due to the lack of a birth experience, and the cubs had to be hand-fed. Two of the cubs died within their first few weeks. The third, named Pirouz (pictured above) became a symbol of national pride for Iran. However, Pirouz died of kidney failure at the age of ten months.
Reintroducing Cheetahs to India
One response to the drastic decline in Asiatic cheetahs is a program to reintroduce cheetahs to India, where they declared wiped out in the 1950s. Twenty cheetahs from Namibia and South Africa were relocated to Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh over the past year. Since March of 2023, six of the original cheetahs and three cubs have died. None of those cheetahs died by human hands, but one succumbed to malnutrition. Prey animals in the park have declined since the cheetah program was proposed. The others died of infections that may have stemmed from poor species management, and have to do with the fact that African cheetahs are genetically and environmentally different from Asiatic cheetahs. These cheetahs grew in their winter coats just as the rainy season began in India, leading to fungal and parasitic infections taking hold around wounds and tracking collars. Cheetah experts in Namibia and South Africa blame inexperienced veterinarians and project mismanagement. They are offering advice, as they know how fragile cheetah populations can be.
The cheetah reintroduction program in India has had deleterious effects on the human population, too. The Sahariya people who lived in the forests of Kuno before it became a national park depended on harvesting chir, an expensive fragrant resin, from the forest's salai trees. The Sahariya villagers were relocated from the area that became the national park due to a program to reintroduce the Asiatic lion, which never came to fruition. The villagers kept returning to the forest to harvest chir, but the cheetah reintroduction program has made large swatches of the park completely inaccessible to them.