Eights Cheetahs are welcomed in India from Namibia
As part of the campaign to reestablish the cheetah in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi released eight cheetahs from Namibia into their new habitat, Madhya Pradesh's Kuno National Park.
On 17 September, three cheetahs were released by the prime minister into Kuno National Park. The PM, who was wearing a fedora, was also spotted taking pictures of the cats with a specialist camera. He let two cheetahs out of the first cage, and then he let another one out of the second enclosure, which was approximately 70 metres distant.
All of the cheetahs have radio collars attached so they can be tracked through satellite. Each cheetah has a specialised monitoring crew that will continuously keep an eye on its movements.
Just before eight in the morning, the cheetah-carrying aircraft touched down at the Indian Air Force's (IAF) Maharajpura airport in Gwalior. Jyotiraditya Scindia, the minister for civil aviation, oversaw the plan as the cheetahs were taken to the army aviation helicopter that would take them to Kuno National Park.
The five female cheetahs range in age from two to five years, while the five male cheetahs range in age from 4.5 to 5.5 years, according to the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF), an international non-profit organisation with its headquarters in Namibia and devoted to protecting the fastest land species.
Asiatic cheetahs once lived in India, but the species was officially declared extinct domestically in 1952. As part of an international translocation initiative, the big cats are being transported from Namibia to India.
The national park is situated around 165 kilometres from Gwalior in the Sheopur district of Madhya Pradesh. Because of its plentiful prey and meadows, the Kuno park was chosen as a residence. However, some have cautioned that the cheetahs may have trouble adjusting to the environment and may get into trouble with the several leopards already present.
According to authorities, the COVID-19 epidemic caused a delay in the "African Cheetah Introduction Project in India," which was intended to introduce the large cat by November of last year in KNP. There are less than 7,000 cheetahs remaining in the world, mostly in the African savannas, and they are listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
