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https://retrieverman.net/2019/10/01...funct-population-of-asiatic-cheetah-in-india/
India’s supreme court is now seeing an interesting case in which taxonomy and endangered species politics converge to have real world consequences. The question is whether African cheetahs can replace Asiatic cheetahs on India’s plains.
Yes, for there were once cheetahs in India. Their traditional quarry was the blackbuck antelope, and many nobles in India kept cheetahs or “hunting leopards,” as the British colonizers called them, for coursing blackbuck.
Cheetahs were not just found in India. They ranged throughout the Middle East up into the Caucasus and Central Asia. In the wild, this lineage of cheetah is found only in Iran, where they exist in only relict numbers. In Iran, the situation is made even more complicated with an international human rights scandal in which several cheetah researchers were imprisoned. Cheetahs have since been extirpated from all of Asia, except for that tiny Iranian population.
So India, a nation with growing wealth and a growing conservation ethic, cannot turn to Iran to reintroduce its former cheetahs. With Iran out of the question, some experts have suggested that African cheetahs be used as stand-ins.
And this is where things get interesting.
India’s supreme court is now seeing an interesting case in which taxonomy and endangered species politics converge to have real world consequences. The question is whether African cheetahs can replace Asiatic cheetahs on India’s plains.
Yes, for there were once cheetahs in India. Their traditional quarry was the blackbuck antelope, and many nobles in India kept cheetahs or “hunting leopards,” as the British colonizers called them, for coursing blackbuck.
Cheetahs were not just found in India. They ranged throughout the Middle East up into the Caucasus and Central Asia. In the wild, this lineage of cheetah is found only in Iran, where they exist in only relict numbers. In Iran, the situation is made even more complicated with an international human rights scandal in which several cheetah researchers were imprisoned. Cheetahs have since been extirpated from all of Asia, except for that tiny Iranian population.
So India, a nation with growing wealth and a growing conservation ethic, cannot turn to Iran to reintroduce its former cheetahs. With Iran out of the question, some experts have suggested that African cheetahs be used as stand-ins.
And this is where things get interesting.