Cheetahs in, govt to re-examine plan to shift Gir lions to Kuno

In an application filed before the apex court on March 25, the Environment Ministry’s National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) also submitted that it was “no longer necessary and mandatory” for it to continue to take the guidance and advice of the court-appointed Expert Committee on the cheetah project. The matter will come up for a hearing on Tuesday.

Shot down by the SC in 2013, the Cheetah project was revived by the NTCA in 2017. In January 2020, the SC allowed it “on an experimental basis” under a three-member Expert Committee headed by conservationist M K Ranjitsinh since “it is not desirable that (the project)… be left to the sole discretion of the NTCA”.

The Expert Committee and the NTCA worked together to finalise the Cheetah Action Plan by January 2022 and India signed an MoU with Namibia in July 2022. Differences between NTCA and Expert Committee surfaced the day first batch of eight Namibian cheetahs reached Kuno on September 17: Ranjitsinh was not apparently allowed “access to the VVIPs” at cheetah release event.

Days after, the Environment Ministry constituted a new Cheetah Task Force without biologist Y V Jhala, who was a member of the first Cheetah Task Force set up in 2010 under Ranjitsinh and headed the project’s technical team ever since. Next, the ministry curtailed to one year a two-year extension it had granted to Jhala on his superannuation on February 28, 2022.

Asked by The Indian Express about the potential impact of Jhala’s exclusion on the project, Ranjitsinh said he was not consulted on forming the new task force or selecting its members.

Sidelined, the Expert Committee moved the SC with a plea to direct the NTCA to keep it in the loop and accept its advice. At the hearing on March 13, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said the government would move application for further directions.

Accordingly, the NTCA on March 25 prayed for an order that “it is no longer necessary and mandatory for the NTCA to continue to take the guidance and advice of the expert committee” appointed by the SC.

“There is no requirement of a continuing supervision/consultation with the expert committee appointed by this Hon’ble Court as a substantial part of the introduction of the cheetahs has already been undertaken and further steps will be taken on the basis of the scientific action plan for introduction of cheetah in consultation with the experts in the relevant field,” NTCA submitted.

On translocating lions from Gir to Kuno, the NTCA pointed out that the lion population increased by 29% over the past five years due to protection measures taken by the Centre and the Gujarat government and that “several meta populations of lions have been established” across Gujarat.

In view of the recent introduction of cheetahs in Kuno and measures taken to secure the lion’s future beyond Gir, the application submitted that “the Union Ministry and NTCA have decided to re-examine the entire aspect of translocation of Asiatic lions from Gir to Kuno from an expert’s perspective” and an appropriate application would be filed before the SC within six months.