After delays caused by the Covid epidemic, a batch of cheetahs will be translocated from South Africa to India in August, Ministry officials stated on Tuesday. The first batch of five-six Cheetahs will be translocated from South Africa to Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh, where they were declared extinct 70 years ago. This will be the first occasion that a huge carnivore would migrate between continents.
On June 15th, a team of South African specialists will travel in India and visit the park to monitor the translocation procedures.
“All of the modalities for getting the Cheetah to the country have been fulfilled, and a deal with South Africa has been reached. The final approval from the Ministry of External Affairs is still pending. On Tuesday, a senior official from the Environment Ministry stated, “One of our teams is now in South Africa.”
The Ministry is working closely with the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the Wildlife Institute of India, which is leading the initiative on behalf of the Indian government.
The last three Asiatic cheetahs in India were hunted and slain by Maharaja Ramanuj Pratap Singh Deo of Koriya in 1947, and the cheetah is said to have vanished from the Indian landscape. The Cheetah was declared extinct in India by the Indian government in 1952.
The Cheetah is the country’s sole big carnivore that has gone extinct owing to a combination of poaching and habitat destruction. A proposal to restore the Cheetah has been in the works for decades.
Plans to bring the Cheetah back to India had been in the works for decades, but the present concept was initially proposed in 2009. In 2020, the Supreme Court approved the scheme. WII re-assessed six sites previously assessed in 2010, including Mukundara Hills Tiger Reserve and Shergarh Wildlife Sanctuary in Rajasthan, Gandhi Sagar Wildlife Sanctuary, Kuno National Park, Madhav National Park, and Nauradehi Wildlife Sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh, and found Kuno to be ready for the Cheetah relocation.
Once the initial batch of African Cheetahs has acclimatised to Indian circumstances, WII specialists predict that 35-40 Cheetahs would be translocated to sites around the nation in the following decades.
