Mandela’s role in making cheetah translocation to India possible

The translocation of 12 cheetahs to India from South Africa on Saturday could be made possible because of changed eco laws after Nelson Mandela was elected president following 27 years as a political prisoner of the white minority apartheid government. Before that, India had ended all relations with South Africa for nearly four decades as it led the international fight against apartheid. “In South Africa, the transition to democracy had substantial implications for wild cheetah conservation. The Game Theft Act (No. 105 of 1991) was responsible for a major change in land use from agriculture to ecotourism,” the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and Environment (DFFE) said in a statement on Saturday. Since 1994 (when Mandela was installed as President) cheetahs have been reintroduced into 63 newly established game reserves that currently support a combined metapopulation of 460 individuals, it said. The Department of Fisheries, Forestry and the Environment has approved the export of up to 29 wild cheetahs per annum to support the conservation efforts for the species outside of the country, the statement said. “It is because of South Africa’s successful conservation practices that our country can participate in a project such as this – to restore a species in a former range state and thus contribute to the the future survival of the species,” said Barbara Creecy, the Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment. The 12 South African cheetahs will join eight others from Namibia that have already been in Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh since last year as part of India’s attempts to reintroduce the cats following their local extinction in 1952 due to overhunting and loss of habitat.