The latest camera trap image from Iran showed Asiatic Cheetah, the critically endangered subspecies, only after a long survey. The Asiatic cheetah is now found only in Iran with numbers only approximately fifty or less. Iran has been trying their best to save it from extinction; unfortunately, that has got much harder as the latest economic sanctions imposed recently by the U.S. has made international aid for conservation purpose disappear. International donations are where they get most of the money required for the cheetah conservation efforts.

It is sad that Asiatic cheetahs are doomed to extinction in the next three decades. Iran is neither capable of conservation nor able to conduct successful captive breeding of the species. They will also not share the animals with adjacent countries where they have more funding and necessary resources for multiplication and conservation of the species. Unfortunately, international geopolitics together with failed diplomacy and related socio-political reasons have been an aggravating factor promoting the path to the rapid extinction of Asiatic cheetahs. Where international cooperation has been necessary, diplomatic, economic, and political isolation of Iran from the rest of the world is responsible for the rapid demise of the majestic indigenous big cat species from the continent of Asia.

India’s role

India is experimentally introducing African cheetahs into the country under surveillance and monitoring with species collected from South Africa and Namibia. The animals may do good and multiply in India, but they are genetically different from the Asiatic cheetah.

There are opposite views on the reintroduction of African Cheetah into the Indian environment. Many opponents of the project have raised the question as to why other animals should be trapped and relocated for an animal that is not even native. According to them, it is more of a business proposition than a wildlife conservation effort. According to prominent opponents, fencing huge areas for a foreign species and kicking native species out of that area is not an ecological decision, it is a pure business move. The experts believe if India really wanted to conserve cheetahs it would help Iran in conserving Asiatic Cheetah rather than buying them from Africa.

However, the lack of cooperation and egoistic approach of India and Iran destroyed the reintroduction of Asiatic lions in Iran in exchange for the reintroduction of Asiatic cheetahs into India.

Unfortunately, the political mess and lack of vision and maturity trimmed the bud of conservation efforts before they could take shape. How unfortunate it is that we are silently looking towards the extinction of an apex predator from the ecosystem due to our inaction and political and diplomatic differences? India has repeatedly tried to get this species reintroduced in a few former ranges, but different sanctions and slow bureaucratic and diplomatic actions have impacted this ambitious project several times in the past.

It is important to note that conservation is not just a fight between native species vs the introduced or reintroduced species; the animal is introduced to create a natural ecosystem. Here the ecosystem is being created for an animal alien to our subcontinent because of which other native species will pay the price. The Asiatic cheetah and the African cheetahs are two distinctly different subspecies inhabiting historically two entirely different continents. We cannot consider them to be the same by their external morphological similarities while neglecting their deep genetic differences.

The debate is whether it is a good idea to introduce non-native species from different countries and invest crucial time and funds that could be used for native wilderness and the conservation of local wildlife. It is quite well documented that there have been only a handful of successful incidents of captive breeding of Asiatic cheetahs; hence their numbers have been declining possibly due to genetic bottlenecks such as a small stock population with low genetic diversity and virulence, and they are fast disappearing from most of their traditional range in Iran.

Still, others argue that Iran has been a complete failure in conservation due to a lack of properly trained conservation experts, lack of specialists and veterinarians well experienced in the breeding of big cats, lack of funding, focus, and interest in cheetah conservation due to unstable national and international political turmoil Iran has been deeply embedded in for decades.

Some wildlife experts opine that India doesn’t have the space for a species like the Asiatic cheetah in India. Huge lands for grassland enclosures don't exist here. If they did the great Indian bustard would not be critically endangered. The major factor prompting the extinction of wild Asiatic cheetahs from India has been a loss of suitable habitat, prey base, and over-exploitation in terms of poaching and trophy hunting. If they were left in huge enclosures in a good grassland with ample prey base and constant surveillance and monitoring, they might breed successfully under partial nature-based captivity.

The supporters of Asiatic cheetah's reintroduction have asked the pertinent question that crippling economic sanctions against Iran or any other country deemed as not “toeing the line” only affects mostly the poor. Money gets diverted away from communities and other worthwhile activities like conservation. The people at the top will be unaffected by the sanctions. How many decades have these sanctions been going on? What has actually changed or achieved?

Absolutely nothing. The poor will get poorer and cheetahs maybe will disappear forever.

(Saikat Kumar Basu is an academic and active researcher dedicated to Agriculture, Life and Environmental Sciences.)