NEW DELHI :
Experts in India say, fences can disrupt natural animal movements and impede genetic exchange between populations
INDIA does not want fenced
habitats for cheetahs like the
ones in South Africa and
Namibia as it is against the
basic tenets of wildlife conservation, the head of the
Centre’s high-level committee set up to monitor the cheetah reintroduction project
said on Thursday.
Experts from South Africa
and Namibia, who are helping reintroduce cheetahs in
India, have recommended
fencing their habitats to prevent poaching, habitat fragmentation and minimise
human-animal conflict.
However, experts in India
say fences can disrupt natural animal movements and
impede genetic exchange
between populations.
“It’s absolutely bogus to
think of fencing the habitats.
It goes against the basic tenets
of wildlife
conservation.
What happened in a fenced park there
(in Africa) will not happen
here. Our understanding is
that regional networks of protected areas should merge into
a national network of protected areas so that there is
porosity for wildlife gene flow,”
said Rajesh Gopal, chairman
of the 11-member cheetah
steering committee.
“We have our own sociocultural issues. We have been
handling tigers for the last 50
years and we know what the
human-wildlife interface is.
We can handle cheetahs too,”
he said.
South African wildlife
expertVincent
van der
Merwe, who is
closely involved with the project, had earlier told PTI:
“There has never been a successful reintroduction (of
cheetahs) into an unfenced
reserve in recorded history. It
has been attempted 15 times
in Africa and it failed every time.“We are not advocating that India
must fence all of its cheetah reserves,
we are saying that just fence two or
threeandcreatesourcereservestotop
up sink reserves.”
Source reserves are habitats that
provide optimal conditions for reproduction of a particular species.
These
areas have abundant resources and
favourable environmental conditions.
They can supportself-sustaining populations that produceasurplus of
individuals, which can then disperse
to other areas.
Sink reserves, on the other
hand, are habitats that have limited
resources or environmental conditions that are less favourable for the
survival or reproduction of a species.
Sink reserves rely on dispersing individuals fromsource reserves to maintain their population numbers.
Several experts, even the Supreme
Court, have expressed concerns over
the lack of space and logistical support in the Kuno National Park and
have suggested shifting cheetahs to
other sanctuaries.
Officials said the Gandhi Sagar
Sanctuary, Madhya Pradesh, is being
prepared as an alternative habitat for
cheetahs by November.
Union Environment Minister
Bhupender Yadav on Monday said
officers and employees involved in
the conservation and management of
cheetahs will be selected and sent on
a study tour to Namibia and South
Africa as part of the project.
The Central Government will provide all necessary support, including
financial resources, for the protection, conservation, promotion and a
cheetah protection force, he said.
According to cheetah steering committee chairman Gopal, seven more
cheetahs, including two females, will
be released into the wild by the third
week of June.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi
released the first batch of eight spotted felines from Namibia into a quarantine enclosure at Kuno in Madhya
Pradesh on September 17 last year.
In the second such translocation,
12 cheetahswere flowninfromSouth
Africa and released into Kuno on
February 18.