12 African cheetahs to arrive at Madhya Pradesh Kuno National Park

Twelve cheetahs five of them female will be flown in from South Africa on February 18, three years after India first mooted the idea.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav will release the cheetahs into their quarantine enclosures in Kuno National Park.

At ten o'clock in the morning, a plane carrying the cheetahs will land at the Gwalior Air Force base. After that, helicopters will transport them to Kuno National Park.

According to officials, the reserve has ten quarantine enclosures for the big cats.

"The 12 cheetahs arriving from South Africa have begun their journey to India. Indian Air Force's C-17 Globemaster aircraft will get them home tomorrow," tweets Minister for Environment, Forest & Climate Change Bhupender Yadav

(Pics: Minister's Twitter account) pic.twitter.com/6ZcUf72VDC

— ANI (@ANI) February 17, 2023

Eight Namibian cheetahs were brought to India by plane in September of that year. On his birthday, September 17, Prime Minister Narendra Modi released the big cats into Kuno National Park.

Before being released into the wild, the eight Namibian cheetahs are currently residing in six square kilometers of hunting enclosures, where they can interact with one another.

The idea for the world's first intercontinental translocation project, the relocation of 12 cheetahs from South Africa, came from the Centre three years ago. The project aims to reintroduce the big cats to the country.

In 1947, India saw the passing of the last cheetah, and the species was declared extinct there in 1952.

In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that African cheetahs, a different subspecies, could be brought into the country at a "carefully chosen location" for an experiment. This accelerated efforts to reintroduce the animals.

The project calls for the importation of approximately 12 to 14 large cats from South Africa, Namibia, and other African nations as a founder stock for a period of five years at the outset, followed by additional years as the program dictates.