Bhopal: Three cheetahs, which were recently brought to Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park from Botswana, will be relocated to Gujarat’s Banni grasslands this year, senior forest officials confirmed on Friday. Banni is also preparing to welcome a fresh batch of around four cheetahs from Kenya, which are expected to reach India in the second half of this year.
A senior official told ThePrint that the first batch of three cheetahs — two female and one male — will be translocated to Gujarat’s Banni within the next three to four months. These cheetahs are part of the nine cheetahs that were flown to the Kuno National Park in February this year. This latest batch of three is currently being monitored in the soft enclosures of the park.
“If things go as per plan, we will be able to transfer the first batch from Botswana in the next few months,” the official said.
Officials also told ThePrint that the Botswana cheetahs will also be joined by four cheetahs that are scheduled to reach India from Kenya this year. The Gujarat forest department along with the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has been working to develop Banni as a fit habitat for the cheetahs. A 500-hectare grassland enclosure has been designed to ensure that the animals have enough space to move around and breed.
The cheetah relocation project does not stop here.
Around July this year, the Madhya Pradesh forest department is also preparing to transfer four Indian-born cheetahs to the Nauradehi wildlife sanctuary.
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Latest setback
After the arrival of the latest batch of cheetahs from Botswana in February this year, India’s Project Cheetah set another milestone in April with the birth of the first cubs in the wild. However, within a month, all four of these cheetah cubs were found dead near the Kuno National Park, believed to have been eaten by a wild animal.
The forest department is yet to officially confirm the cause of their death. This latest setback has now left India’s total cheetah count at 53.
India’s Project Cheetah began in September 2022, with the first batch of eight cheetahs — five females and three males — being flown in from Namibia.
In February 2023, another batch of 12 cheetahs were brought to India from South Africa under a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed between the Union Ministry for Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) and the government of South Africa.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)