South Africa is flying cheetahs to India and Mozambique as part of a major rewilding project to reintroduce the world’s fastest land animal in other countries.
Cheetahs were reintroduced into Mozambique’s Maputo Special Reserve after a 60-year absence in October last year, and four more have been flown from South Africa this past week after being quarantined for a month.
‘It’s a very stressful process for the cats to be in a boma environment because they have nowhere to go whilst we are darting them,’ commented Wildlife Veterinarian, Andy Frasier. ‘We need to use our drug doses very carefully and make sure that we give them enough drugs to anaesthetise them safely.’
‘They have woken up nicely in their crates and they are all relaxed enough that we are happy for them to leave in their transport,’ he said about the cheetahs transported to Mozambique’s Marromeu National Reserve in the Zambezi Delta region.
Mozambique Zambezi River Delta area once had a significant cheetah population which was drastically reduced by poaching because larger cats such as lions and leopards preyed on the smaller cheetahs.
Frazier told Al Jazeera that the team is preparing for the more challenging relocation of cheetahs to India, which will require them to travel a much larger distance with stops in commercial airports. The cheetahs will have to be treated with a tranquiliser that lasts three to five days.
The Asian cheetah, a subspecies of the cheetah, once roamed India but went regionally extinct in 1952 with the last remaining Asian cheetahs only found in Iran.
Namibia has already supplied eight cheetahs for India’s reintroduction efforts, and South Africa is to supply a further 12.
‘For a genetically viable population in India in the long-term you need at least 500 individuals, so every year we will send eight to 12 animals, to top them up, to increase numbers, to bring in new genetics until they have a viable population,’ said Vincent van der Merwe, manager of the Cheetah Metapopulation Initiative.
South Africa’s cheetah population is said to be expanding at a rate of about 8% annually, allowing the country to move about 30 of the cats to other game reserves.
Picture: Screenshot
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