Do Not Wreck an Ecosystem to Fulfill Someone’s Boyhood Dream

In India, the wildlife-reintroduction scheme known as Project Cheetah faces growing opposition , primarily from supporters of its close cousin, Project Tiger. The two big-cat species cannot coexist and would have to compete for habitat — and more important, the two projects would have to compete for funding. The tiger supporters seem to have the better of the argument, since Project Tiger has already been around for several decades and because the Indian tiger is merely threatened, whereas the Asiatic cheetah has been extinct in India for more than fifty years. And there are ecological hitches involving prey supplies and livestock, apparently .

But Project Cheetah’s advocates are plugging along undaunted, and one member of the National Board for Wildlife has an interesting theory why:

“We have an ex-bureaucrat of former Gujarat royalty, who is seen on YouTube talking about his childhood dreams to bring back cheetahs. Another former Gujarat royal, a top biologist, is desperate for the project, perhaps because he was left out of the Sariska [tiger] reintroduction due to W.I.I. politics. But personal ambitions can’t justify random introduction of a species.”

An aristocrat whose childhood obsession has ripened into madness and a resentful scientist who is less cracked than his sponsor but no less dangerous — am I wrong, or are these fellows Bond villains? The last act practically writes itself: toss them in the cheetah cage, lock the door, and your your poetic justice is all sorted. There has never been an Indian Bond girl, either. My vote goes to Reshma Shetty.