New Delhi: A batch of nine cheetahs—six female and three male—from Botswana landed in Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park on Saturday morning.
India’s Cheetah Project Director, Uttam Kumar Sharma, told ThePrint that the big cats’ species flew on an Indian Air Force aircraft for about nine to ten hours to reach Gwalior Saturday morning.
“The cheetahs reached Gwalior around 9am. They will be taken to their enclosures,” Sharma told ThePrint, adding that they will be kept under quarantine for a month before they are finally released.
With the arrival of the new batch, the cheetah count in India stands at 48. This includes 29 Indian-born cubs. The latest to be added to the list were four cubs born to the South Africa-born female, Gamini, on 18 February.
Project Cheetah
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 was 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.
However, the reintroduction of cheetahs in India has not been smooth. Out of the 20 cheetahs that were brought to India from Namibia and South Africa, nine adults died in India due to various reasons. Ten more cubs born in India have also lost their lives.
The authorities, however, are hopeful that despite the setbacks, the new batch of cheetahs will give India’s Project Cheetah the much-needed push.
“This is a huge step in the cheetah re-introduction project. We will hit 50 (the number of cheetahs) very soon,” Sharma added.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)