NEWSLINK: What drove the charismatic cheetah to extinction in India?

"I was out on leave by myself, chiefly after lions. My native shikari (game tracker) came into my tent with an auspicious grin, just as I was finishing my breakfast, and said, ‘Sahib, I think I have got the big lion for you at last today; I have marked a big beast under a tree about four miles off; what it is I do not know…,’” Colonel E.A. Hardy of the 21st Hussars wrote in 1878, in his book Our Horses. The Colonel set out for his hunt, and some 30 yards away, he saw what he thought was a single large beast lying fast asleep. “I fired. To the shot up sprang six cheetahs, beautiful brutes, growling and rushing over each other, one evidently severely wounded. I was really so taken aback myself, I was stupid for a moment; but before I could determine whether to fire my second barrel or to bolt, the old shikari yelled out, ‘Come quickly for your horse, they are cheetahs, you can spear them; we’ll kill them all!’”

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