AFP

Eight Namibian cheetahs arrived in India Saturday, decades after their local extinction, in an ambitious project to reintroduce the spotted big cats that has divided experts on its prospects.

Officials say the project is the world’s first intercontinental relocation of cheetahs, the planet’s fastest land animal.

The five females and three males were moved from a game park in Namibia aboard a chartered Boeing 747 dubbed “Cat plane” for an 11-hour flight.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi presided over the release at Kuno National Park, a wildlife sanctuary 320 kilometres (200 miles) south of New Delhi selected for its abundant prey and grasslands.

“Today the cheetah has returned to the soil of India,” Modi said in a video address after their arrival, which coincided with the leader’s 72nd birthday.

“The nature loving consciousness of India has also awakened with full force,” he added. “We must not allow our efforts to fail.”

Each of the animals, aged between two and five and a half, have been fitted with a satellite collar to monitor their movements. 

They will initially be kept in a quarantine enclosure for about a month before being released in the open forest areas of the park.

Critics have warned the creatures may struggle to adapt to the Indian habitat.

A significant number of leopards are present in the park, and conservation scientist Ravi Chellam said that cubs could fall prey to feral dogs and other carnivores.

Under the government’s current action plan, “the prospects for a viable, wild and free-ranging population of cheetahs getting established in India is bleak,” he told AFP.

“The habitats should have been prepared first before bringing the cats from Namibia,” he added. “It is like us moving to a new city with only a sub-optimal place to stay — Not a nice situation at all.”

But organisers are unfazed.

“Cheetahs are very adaptable and (I’m) assuming that they will adapt well into this environment,” said Dr Laurie Marker, founder of the Namibia-based charity Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF), which has been central to the project logistics.

“I don’t have a lot of worries,” she told AFP.

– Habitat loss and hunting –

India was once home to the Asiatic cheetah but it was declared extinct there by 1952. 

The critically endangered subspecies, which once roamed across the Middle East, Central Asia and India, are now only found, in very small numbers, in Iran.

Efforts to reintroduce the animals to India gathered pace in 2020 when the Supreme Court ruled that African cheetahs, a different subspecies, could be settled in India at a “carefully chosen location” on an experimental basis.

They are a donation from the government of Namibia, one of a tiny handful of countries in Africa where the magnificent creature survives in the wild.

Negotiations are ongoing for similar translocation from South Africa, with vets suggesting 12 cats could be moved. 

Cheetahs became extinct in India primarily because of habitat loss and hunting for their distinctive spotted coats. 

An Indian prince, the Maharaja Ramanuj Pratap Singh Deo, is widely believed to have killed the last three recorded cheetahs in India in the late 1940s.

One of the oldest of the big cat species, with ancestors dating back about 8.5 million years, cheetahs once roamed widely throughout Asia and Africa in great numbers, said CCF.

But today only around 7,000 remain, primarily in the African savannas.

The cheetah is listed globally as “vulnerable” on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species.

In North Africa and Asia it is “critically endangered”.

Their survival is threatened primarily by dwindling natural habitat and loss of prey due to human hunting, the development of land for other purposes and climate change.

Japan’s weather agency warned Saturday of “unprecedented” risks from a “very dangerous” typhoon heading towards the southern Kyushu island, urging residents to take shelter ahead of the storm.

Typhoon Nanmadol was producing gusts of up to 270 kilometres (167 miles) an hour and classed as a “violent” storm, the agency’s top level, on Saturday.

By late afternoon it was approaching the remote Minami Daito island, 400 kilometres east of Okinawa island.

The storm is expected to approach or make landfall on Sunday in Kyushu’s southern Kagoshima prefecture, then move north the following day before heading towards Japan’s main island.

“There are risks of unprecedented storms, high waves, storm surges, and record rainfall,” Ryuta Kurora, the head of the Japan Meteorological Agency’s forecast unit, told reporters. 

“Maximum caution is required,” he said, urging residents to evacuate early.

“It’s a very dangerous typhoon.”  

Kurora said the weather agency was likely to issue its highest alert later Saturday for the Kagoshima region.

Called “special warnings”, these are issued only when the JMA forecasts conditions seen once in a few decades. 

It would be the first typhoon-linked special warning issued outside of the Okinawa region since the current system began in 2013.

“The wind will be so fierce that some houses might collapse,” Kurora told reporters, also warning of flooding and landslides.

An evacuation “instruction” — level four on a five-level scale — is already in place for 330,000 people in Kagoshima, and authorities urged people to move to shelters or alternative accommodation before a top-level call was issued.

Evacuation warnings in Japan are not mandatory, and during past extreme weather events authorities have struggled to convince residents to take shelter quickly enough.

Japan is currently in typhoon season and faces around 20 such storms a year, routinely seeing heavy rains that cause landslides or flash floods.

In 2019, Typhoon Hagibis smashed into Japan as it hosted the Rugby World Cup, claiming the lives of more than 100 people. 

A year earlier, Typhoon Jebi shut down Kansai Airport in Osaka, killing 14 people.

And in 2018, floods and landslides killed more than 200 people in western Japan during the country’s annual rainy season.

Ahead of Typhoon Nanmadol’s arrival, flight cancellations began to affect regional airports including those in Kagoshima, Miyazaki and Kumamoto, according to the websites of Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways. 

Scientists say climate change is increasing the severity of storms and causing extreme weather such as heat waves, droughts and flash floods to become more frequent and intense. 

Riders are bracing for an unusual threat at the world cycling championships in Australia this week — swooping magpies.

Wollongong, a coastal city 80 kilometres (50 miles) south of Sydney that is hosting the eight-day event from Sunday, is home to flocks of the notoriously territorial black-and-white birds.

September is peak swooping season as magpies seek to protect their young in the nest, which can include dive-bombing people on bikes they perceive as a threat.

“Magpies can be quite territorial and there’s going to be a lot going on in their particular areas,” Paul Partland from the Illawarra Animal Hospital told local radio station Wave FM.

“Swooping birds tend to target people that are by themselves and also people that are moving in very fast ways.”

More than 1,000 cyclists from over 70 nations will be vying for 13 gold medals in races of wheel-to-wheel combat at the championships.

Although the riders will be wearing helmets, the threat from the sharp-beaked birds is a genuine concern.

“A fairly large bird came very close and it just kept following me,” Belgian cyclist Remco Evenepoel, who won the Vuelta a Espana in Spain last week, told cycling.com after a training session on Friday.

“It was terrifying. But that’s Australia, apparently. I hope it’s the only time it happens, but I am afraid of it,” added Evenepoel, among the favourite for Sunday’s men’s time trial.

Fellow time trial contender Stefan Kung revealed one of his Swiss teammates was also targeted.

“Yeah, one of our guys has been attacked already by a magpie,” he said.

Australia has a website for reporting magpie attacks, with 1,492 registered this year including 192 injuries, often minor.

But there have been fatalities, including a cyclist in Wollongong who died in 2019 when he crashed into a fence post while trying to avoid a swooping magpie.

Japan’s weather agency on Saturday warned of a “very dangerous” typhoon heading towards the country’s southern Kyushu island, urging residents to evacuate before powerful wind hits the area.

Typhoon Nanmadol was carrying gusts up to 270 kilometres on Saturday near the remote Minami Daito island, 400 kilometres (250 miles) east of Okinawa island, the weather agency said.

The storm is expected to approach or make landfall on Sunday in the southern Kagoshima prefecture in Kyushu, then move north the following day before heading towards the main Japanese island.

“There are risks of unprecedented storms, high waves, storm surges, and record rainfall,” Ryuta Kurora, the head of the Japan Meteorological Agency’s forecast unit, told reporters. 

“Maximum caution is required,” he said, urging residents to evacuate early.

“It’s a very dangerous typhoon.”   

Kurora said the weather agency was likely to issue the highest alert for Kagoshima later in the evening.

“The wind will be so fierce that some houses might collapse,” he said, also warning of flooding and landslides.

Japan is currently in typhoon season and is hit by around 20 such storms a year, routinely seeing heavy rains that cause landslides or flash floods.

Scientists say climate change is increasing the severity of storms and causing extreme weather such as heat waves, droughts and flash floods to become more frequent and intense. 

From parched rivers to a glacier collapse and this week’s deadly storms, Italy has suffered numerous climate events this year — but many politicians pay the subject little more than lip service.

Desperate to see some firm commitments ahead of September 25 elections, climate activists staged a sit-in at the Rome offices of frontrunner Giorgia Meloni earlier this month.

They demanded a public meeting with the far-right leader, but police carted them off the premises.

Concern over the spiralling cost of living has drowned out the debate over how to tackle the devastation caused by global warming.

The war in Ukraine has put the risk to energy supplies centre stage in a country heavily reliant on Russian gas. That has prompted a fresh drive for renewables — but also an increase in production in coal-fired plants.

Michele Giuli, a member of the Last Generation movement that stormed Meloni’s office, said deadly floods in central Italy this week had to refocus thinking.

Many have linked the extreme weather event to climate change, including Prime Minister Mario Draghi.

“People have died…,” he told AFP. “This must make us reflect.

“What do we want to do with our lives, while the Italian state does nothing to reduce emissions and avoid tens of thousands of similar deaths in the next few years?”

– Violence of climate events –

This summer’s drought, the worst in 70 years, drained the Po River, the peninsula’s largest water reservoir and a crucial resource for Italy’s agricultural sector.

And then the rains came, hitting land as hard as concrete. Five times the number of storms, hurricanes and floods lashed the country compared to 10 summers ago, according to the agricultural association Coldiretti.

In August, Italian scientists wrote an open letter to politicians, urging them to put the emergency first.

But an analysis published this week by Greenpeace found that less than 0.5 percent of political leaders’ statements on the main TV news programmes covered the climate crisis.

This summer in Italy “will be sadly remembered for the frequency and the violence of climate events… yet this dramatic emergency does not seem to affect many of the political leaders seeking to lead the country,” said Giuseppe Onufrio, executive director of Greenpeace Italy.

But it has been worse. Election experts at Luiss university in Rome note that some parties never used to mention the environment at all.

– Manifestos ‘weak on detail’ –

The widespread inclusion of green policies is actually “one of the novelties of this electoral campaign”, the CISE electoral studies unit said in a commentary last week.

This reflects the growing interest among the public, with 80 percent of respondents they surveyed agreeing that the fight against climate change should be a priority for Italy.

“At least climate change is addressed, or at least mentioned, in all of (the manifestos), though many are weak on detail,” said Piera Patrizio, senior researcher at the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London.

Italy had vowed to close its coal-fired plants by 2025, a goal it intends to keep despite the short-term measures to tackle the shortage of gas this winer.

Meloni’s right-wing alliance pledges to invest in renewable energies and waste-to-energy plants, as well as domestic production of natural gas, and the installation of regasification plants.

The outgoing government plans to install two such plants off Tuscany and Emilia Romagna, despite local protests.

Enrico Letta’s centre-left Democratic Party (PD), which presents the main challenge to Meloni, backs the plants as a temporary fix.

Meanwhile the anti-immigrant League party and right-wing Forza Italia — part of Meloni’s coalition — are pushing for nuclear energy though Italians rejected it in two referenda in 1987 and 2011.

The PD rejects nuclear power as too slow and expensive a solution and wants instead to sharply increase the share of renewables produced in Italy.

“There’s next to nothing (in the policies) on equity… on how some households, some parts of the country are going to be more affected than other,” Patrizio said.

The EU’s post-pandemic recovery fund, from which Italy expects to benefit almost 200 billion euros, is heavily tilted towards projects that ease the so-called “ecological transition”.

But Patrizio added: “Italy doesn’t have a net zero strategy right now… it doesn’t even know where to begin.”

Marzio Galeotti, environmental science and policy professor at Milan University, said it was “difficult to convince” the public that “environmental sustainability and emissions reduction can be combined with economic growth”.

But, he noted sadly, this is true of many countries: “We are seeing a kind of temporary amnesia that is not unique to Italy.”