Kuno National Park: All set to welcome Cheetahs from Namibia

India is all set to shelter cheetahs seven decades after the animal became extinct in the country. Around eight cheetahs are being brought to India from Namibia on September 17, which is also the birthday of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A Boeing 747-400 aircraft will be flying them from Namibia's capital Windhoek. They will be kept inside cages in the main cabin. Vets will have full access to them during the flight. The no-stop flight will Jaipur on Saturday morning and from Jaipur they will be transported by helicopter to the Kuno-Palpur National Park (KPNP) in Sheopur district in Madhya Pradesh. PM Modi will release them into their new abode on Saturday.

According to union minister for Environment, Forests, and Climate Change,  this is the world’s first project to move extinct wild creatures, like the cheetah, from one continent to another.  Modi will release three of these cheetahs into the park’s quarantine enclosures as part of the cheetah reintroduction programme. According to the protocol, an animal needs to be quarantined for a month before and after shifting from one continent to another. The project to bring back the completely extinct cheetahs in India in 1948 had been ongoing since 1955, but now cheetahs are making a comeback after 74 years.In 1947, the last cheetah of India were reportedly hunted and shot the last three recorded Asiatic cheetahs in India in 1947 by Maharaja Ramanuj Pratap Singh Deo of Koriya district in Chhattisgarh  and in 1952, the animal was declared extinct in India. Then, in 2009, the “African Cheetah Introduction Project in India” was initiated. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 epidemic has caused a delay in the plan. The group of eight cheetahs comprises 5 females and 3 males, will be transported from Namibia to India. The female cheetahs are aged between 2 and 5 years and the male cheetahs are aged between 4.5 years and 5.5 years.

The Cheetah Conservation Fund, an international organisation headquartered in Namibia and dedicated to saving the cheetah in the wild, said that the male cheetahs include two brothers who have been living on the CCF's 58,000-hectare private reserve near Otjiwarongo, Namibia, since at least July 2021, when the CCF staff first noticed their tracks around the Centre.  The aircraft bringing the cheetahs to India has been modified to allow cages to be secured in the main cabin but will still allow vets to have full access to the cats during the flight.

As per information, In 2009, Jairam Ramesh, then minister for environment and forests, had initiated the cheetah reintroduction project, but it was stayed by the Supreme Court in 2012 on the grounds that the African cheetah was an alien and exotic species and because the National Board for Wildlife, the apex wildlife body in the country, had not been consulted in the matter. In January 2020, though, after the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) filed a petition, the Supreme Court finally allowed the Centre to introduce the African cheetah to a suitable habitat in India.