Cheetahs set to be reintroduced in India after 70 years

The introduction of the fastest land animal in India is being done under Project Cheetah

The world’s first trans-continental translocation of an endangered animal would take place on Saturday when Prime Minister Narendra Modi would release three African cheetahs in Kuno Palpur national park where they would be ferried from Jaipur in Indian Air Force helicopters.

The three are part of a larger group of eight animals that would land in Jaipur at the daybreak after a 10-hour-long flight from Hosea Kutako International Airport in Windhoek in Namibia.

Within months, the second batch of 12 cheetahs will arrive from South Africa, creating a founding population of the spotted cats that became extinct in India seventy years ago when the last three of them were shot by Maharaja Ramanuj Pratap Singh Deo of Surguja (currently Koriya in Chhattisgarh) in 1947. India declared cheetahs extinct in 1952.

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“The Prime Minister will release three cheetahs in quarantine enclosures. The rest will be released into their own separate quarantine enclosures,” said SP Yadav, the National Tiger Conservation Authority, director, who also heads the Project Cheetah.

After spending a month in quarantine, the animals would be released in a larger holding area (six sq km) where live prey would be available. The forest officials will keep the cheetahs under watch for another few weeks before a decision is taken on their release in the wild.

“Satellite radio collars have been put on each cheetah for their geolocation updates which will be monitored. Each cheetah will also be given a dedicated monitoring team which will monitor it, patrol it and update us with any of its movements,” Yadav said.

The three males are between 4.5-5.5 years of age while the five females are between 2-5 years. As India plans to establish a meta-population of cheetahs – four different but inter-connected parks housing the predators – India will continue to import cheetahs from African nations over the next 15 years.

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This, experts apprehend, would delay shifting Asiatic lions from Gir to Kuno – the original purpose of readying the site in Madhya Pradesh. An alternative site for lions was thought as a conservation priority because the presence of all the lions in a single place makes them vulnerable to infections. Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park witnessed one such episode of widespread death of lions in 1994.

In April 2013, the Supreme Court ordered the shifting of some of Gujarat’s lions to the Kuno wildlife sanctuary in neighbouring Madhya Pradesh. Gujarat, however, opposed any plan of shifting the lion outside the state.

The Union Environment Ministry said it had no plans to shift lions anywhere outside Gir at the moment. The Ministry is giving funds to Gujarat for lion conservation activities including for habitat improvement, water management, grassland development and prey augmentation to facilitate the natural dispersal of lions beyond the Gir landscape.