 "Wild Wild Best: How India is emerging as the Big Daddy of big cats")
India is home to 75 per cent of the world’s wild tiger population. It’s the only abode for Asiatic lions. It has successfully reintroduced the cheetah and the leopard and snow leopard population is on the rise. The country’s conservation story is worth boasting about and there are bigger plans in place, as the International Big Cat Alliance (IBCA) takes shape.
The Union Cabinet on Thursday formally announced the establishment of this initiative with a one-time budgetary support of Rs 150 crore from the Centre until 2028. The secretariat of the IBCA will be located in India.
We take a look at what the IBCA is and how India has emerged as the global leader in the conservation of big cats.
The making of the International Big Cat Alliance
Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the IBCA in April 2023 during an event in Mysuru to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Project Tiger, a wildlife conservation movement to protect the Bengal tiger. The alliance aims to ensure international cooperation for the conservation of seven big cats – lion, tiger, leopard, cheetah, snow leopard, jaguar and puma.
India is home to five of these animals, save for the jaguar and puma. Six of the big cats on the list are vulnerable or endangered in the International Union for Conservation of Nature list. The puma is categorised as “least concern” but their population has been decreasing and they face the risk of loss of habitat.
The IBCA “has been conceived as a multi-country, multi-agency coalition of 96 big cat range countries”, those which house one or more of these big cats. Apart from these nations, the alliance will also include “non-range countries interested in big cat conservation, conservation partners and scientific organisations working in the field of big cat conservation,” according to a press statement.
India is leading from the front in the project and rightly so. Its efforts in protecting the population of vulnerable big cats are a testament to its sincerity and success.
The Union Cabinet led by PM Shri @narendramodi ji today approved the establishment of the International Big Cat Alliance with its HQ in India.
— Bhupender Yadav (मोदी का परिवार) (@byadavbjp) February 29, 2024
The move reflects PM Modi’s commitment towards conservation of wildlife, particularly tigers and other endangered big cats. This… pic.twitter.com/Mw048Ycpsz
The Asiatic lion is king
The Asiatic lion is found in only one place in the world in the wild – the Gir National Park and Wildlife Sanctuary in Gujarat and its surrounding areas. According to the last count carried out in 2020, their population stands at 674, an increased rate of 28.87 per cent (the highest so far) from the earlier calculation of 523.
The big cat was on the brink of extinction. With hunting and encroachment, their numbers dropped to a mere 20. Efforts to save the lion started before Independence but it was in 1965 that the Indian Forest Service stepped in to set up a conservation programme. Gir was declared a wildlife sanctuary and since then there has been a steady rise in the population.
Now Gujarat is ready to take the next steps. After concerns over the lions being concentrated in one area, the state will move some to another place – the Badra Wildlife Sanctuary . It will take about 40 adults and sub-adults.
Also read: How Gujarat’s Gir National Park is a roaring success in conservation of Asiatic lions
Saving the tiger
Project Tiger completed 50 years last year and it has given India every reason to celebrate. The country has the highest number of tigers in the wild, accounting for 75 per cent of the world population.
There are 3,682 tigers now, up from 2,967 in 2018, a rise of almost 24 per cent in four years. There are 53 reserves for the striped cat, spanning 75,000 square kilometres, and Uttarakhand’s Jim Corbett National Park is the leader with 260 of them. Madhya Pradesh has aced the conservation efforts – its tiger population has jumped from 526 to 785, a 49 per cent rise in the same period.
But all this would have been impossible without the massive contribution of the government and the people. At the time of independence, India had 40,000 tigers. But that number dwindled to below 2,000 by 1970 because of widespread hunting and poaching. The International Union for Conservation of Nature declared the tiger as an endangered species.
That year hunting tigers was banned. Three years on, in 1973, the Indian government launched Project Tiger to save the wild cats facing extinction. The initiative did not focus only on conserving the tiger but also on preserving its natural habitat.
That is when tiger numbers began to rise. But there were setbacks along the way. The local termination of tigers from Rajasthan’s Sariska prompted the Manmohan Singh government to establish the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), which had more power to check poaching. Villages were relocated from protected areas and locals were sensitised.
“Protecting the tiger means protecting large landscapes and everything within, from butterflies to frogs, and termites to elephants, as well as the trees and the rivers," Anish Andheria, president of the Wildlife Conservation Trust, a Mumbai-based nonprofit conservation agency is quoted as saying by Nikkei Asia.
Today, the tiger attracts tourists from within the country and across the world, raking in hundreds of billions. While Asian countries like China, Thailand and Malaysia have fallen back, India has taken big strides.
Also read: Maya, Machli, Munna, naam toh suna hoga?: How India’s legendary tigers got their names
The comeback of the cheetah
It was in 1947 that the last three recorded Asiatic cheetahs were shot dead in India. The spotted cat was declared extinct in 1952.
But now cheetahs are back , running freely in the grasslands of Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park , courtesy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They were reintroduced in the country on 17 September – eight cheetahs arrived from Namibia. In February 2023, seven males and five females were imported from South Africa.
It’s been 15 months since and there have been some hits and misses. Some cheetahs could not survive – seven adults and three cubs have died. Thirteen out of the original 20 remain. But in January, three more cubs were born and soon 14 adults from enclosures will be released into the wild.
According to Union forest, environment and climate change minister Bhupender Yadav, India’s cheetah project is showing signs of achieving its objectives. “It is a challenging project and the early indications are encouraging,” he said Yadav who held a review meeting earlier this week.
Of the six criteria given in the “Action Plan” for assessing the short-term success, the project has already met four: 50 per cent survival of introduced cheetahs, the establishment of home ranges, the birth of cubs in Kuno, and the contribution of the project to generate revenue for the local communities, the review meeting has revealed.
There is a long way to go but the signs are positive.
Also read: A year after reintroduction of cheetahs in India, a look at how big cats have fared
The leopard thrives
They are the smallest of the large cats in India. In most Indian forests, where the tiger is an apex predator, the leopard also makes its home. Surviving is a challenge but the cats with rosettes continue to thrive. Conservation has a role to play.
On Thursday, PM Modi hailed the significant increase in India’s leopard population, saying it is a testament to the country’s unwavering dedication to biodiversity. According to a report released by the environment minister, India’s estimated leopard population rose from 12,852 in 2018 to 13,874 in 2022. Madhya Pradesh has the maximum number of leopards in the country at 3,907, up from 3,421 in 2018, the report said.
The number of felines grew from 1,690 in 2018 to 1,985 in 2022 in Maharashtra, from 1,783 to 1,879 in Karnataka, and from 868 to 1,070 in Tamil Nadu.
In India, the leopard conservation narrative is incomplete without the story of Jawai in Rajasthan. In the village of Bera, humans and leopards cohabit without any conflict. Around 60 leopards prowl the land. Bera boasts of one of the world’s highest leopard densities within its 25 km radius.
Pushpendra Singh Ranawat, a conservationist told BBC last year, “There has not been a single incident of poaching in at least five decades… And importantly, leopards here do not consider human presence as a potential threat.”
That is quite remarkable.
The success story of the snow leopard
Snow leopards are elusive. They live in high-altitude habitats, making them even more difficult to spot. But they are also fewer in number. With a global population of under 10,000, the species is on the IUCN red list.
The felines are found in India. The country’s first-ever survey of the animals puts their number at 718 , accounting for 10 to 15 per cent of the global population. Around 100 of the protected cats are found at the High Altitude National Park in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kishtwar – the first was sighted only in April 2022.
The Snow Leopard Population Assessment in India (SPAI) Program, conducted from 2019 to 2023, covered roughly 120,000 sq km of the animal’s habitat across the trans-Himalayan region. A report by the environment ministry says that understanding the precise population of the animal is important because of its role as the apex predator in the Himalayan ecosystem.
The snow leopard faces the potential threat of habitat loss because of climate change and overgrazing can lead to the loss of prey. “The integrity of these high-altitude habitats is intertwined with the socio-cultural fabric of local communities and the economic sustenance of populations residing downstream,” the report says.
Now the big task is ensuring its long-term survival. It needs to be closely monitored. But India’s track record in saving its big cats is proof that the snow leopard is in safe hands.
With inputs from agencies
