Project Cheetah in India completes one year with highs and lows
India's ambitious project Cheetah on Sunday completed one year after the first batch of eight Namibian cheetahs was released in Madhya Pradesh's Kuno National Park (KNP) by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his birthday on September 17, 2022.
Subsequently, twelve cheetahs from South Africa were also translocated and released in Kuno National Park in February 2023.
These cheetahs represent a big feather in India's cap for restoring natural treasures. The entire project was implemented under the meticulous supervision of the expert team consisting of Government officials, Scientists, Wildlife Biologists and Veterinarians belonging to Namibia, South Africa and India, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change stated.
Out of the above 6 criteria given in the action plan for assessing the short-term success, the project has already met four criteria namely: 50 per cent survival of introduced cheetahs, the establishment of home ranges, the birth of cubs in Kuno and the project has contributed revenue to the local communities directly through the engagement of cheetah trackers and indirectly by way of appreciation of land value in the surrounding areas of Kuno, it stated.
The Ministry further stated «The challenging inter-continental, wild to wild, Cheetah translocation by air, from Namibia and South Africa to India is the first ever such effort undertaken in the world to rectify the ecologically wrong done in the past.
