Namibia wants ivory trade clause in deal for sending cheetahs to India

Context

Namibia wants India’s support for lifting a United Nations ban on commercial trade of wildlife products, including ivory, for translocation of cheetahs.

About

Namibia’s demand:

Namibia and a few other countries want CITES to lift the ban on certain wildlife products so that they can sell stockpiles of ivory and other wildlife parts internationally.
- Trade of wildlife body parts is banned under the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
- Agreeing to such a condition will not be possible as India’s domestic laws prohibit any trade of wildlife body parts.

Re-introducing Cheetah in India:

The project to translocate cheetahs from Africa to India is a long-term one being implemented by the environment ministry with the help of the Wildlife Institute of India.
The Supreme Court appointed an expert panel, which approved Kuno Palpur as the possible location for cheetah relocation.
In the past six months, the Madhya Pradesh forest department has relocated villagers from Kuno and has prepared an enclosure with round-the-clock surveillance for reintroduction of cheetahs.

What is reintroduction and why reintroduce Cheetah now?

‘Reintroduction’ of a species means releasing it in an area where it is capable of surviving.
Reintroductions of large carnivores have increasingly been recognised as a strategy to conserve threatened species and restore ecosystem functions.
The cheetah is the only large carnivore that has been extirpated, mainly by over-hunting in India in historical times.
India now has the economic ability to consider restoring its lost natural heritage for ethical as well as ecological reasons.

About Cheetah:

The cheetah, Acinonyx jubatus, is one of the oldest of the big cat species, with ancestors that can be traced back more than five million years to the Miocene era.
The cheetah is also the world’s fastest land mammal.
It is listed as vulnerable in IUCN red listed species.
The country’s last spotted feline died in Chhattisgarh in 1947. Later, the cheetah — which is the fastest land animal — was declared extinct in India in 1952.
The Asiatic cheetah is classified as a “critically endangered” species by the IUCN Red List, and is believed to survive only in Iran.