Cheetah

For over a decade, December 4 has been celebrated as World Wildlife Conservation Day. It is celebrated to raise awareness about protecting endangered species and ecosystems. However, before being celebrated for raising awareness about endangered species, the date was celebrated for a species that has a narrow niche. Cheetah has been a flagship species for grassland habitat. International Cheetah Day is also celebrated on December 4th to highlight the plight of cheetahs losing their habitat and going extinct. Dr. Laurie Marker celebrates Khayam who was trained for the first research project in re-wilding and we have come a long way if we talk about re-wilding. India has conducted the first inter-continental reintroduction and established a cheetah population in Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh. Asiatic cheetahs were found only in India and Iran where in the former the species was last reported in the early 1950s and the latter the individuals are less in number. If we see the distribution map (see below), it matches our understanding of the Asiatic cheetah being in Asia.

However, we are forgetting one favorite activity of previous centuries. This is not Shikar where the record of hunting down the various carnivores was practiced. Cheetah gained its name "hunting leopard" because it was trained to run after blackbuck and the like and hunt it. However, this brought another problem. This sport needed continuous captivity of the Cheetah and hence it was captured from the wild and replenished the emperor's stock. The species faced difficulty in captive breeding, hence constant sourcing from the wild was done which affected its population. Probably it was not exactly hunting down the cheetah, but the sport of keeping stock of cheetahs by "extracting cheetahs from the wild" affected its population.

When I saw a cheetah in a portrait in a museum of Mongolia (not allowed to take pictures), it made me question the record of distribution. Natural distribution I understand but what about the exchange of cheetahs in the countries which has the extent of sport hunting by emperors? Post Genghis Khan's death, the Mongol Empire's imprint was said to be in the Golden Horde of Russia, the Ilkhanate of Iran and Iraq, the Yuan dynasty of China (Kublai Khan), and the Mughal Empire. Both Kublai Khan and Mughal Emperor Akbar are said to have hundreds of cheetahs in captivity. Not in the wild, but that means cheetahs were also present at the extent of the Mongol empire! It is reported that 0.5% of men worldwide have nearly identical Y chromosomes to Genghis Khan.

The Mongol empire had such a wide male population which was so much linked, yet the Cheetah is termed a depauperate species i.e. lacking in numbers or a variety of species. The re-wildling of cheetahs opens up many conservation impacts, especially conserving the grassland habitat. Sadly, Cheetah has always been seen as a pet or in captivity. How of all the cats, this love for animals degraded its life to be in captivity is probably a boon and not a blessing. It was seen in many paintings of the royal era in captivity but in recent times a celebrity used to roam around with a cheetah named Chiquitta. Any idea who the celebrity was? It is said that the pet cheetah would trouble orchestra people during performance. I wonder what chaos Chiquitta's purring would have caused? But I guess we all would love to have this magnificent species be more on this planet.

If you want to read more check my article https://wildernessandme.wordpress.com/2016/05/12/cheetah-prelude-epilogue-the-lost-chapter/