12 Cheetahs to be Flown from South Africa Under Cheetah Reintroduction Program

Category : National Published on: February 18 2023

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Under the ambitious Cheetah reintroduction programme, twelve cheetahs will be flown in from South Africa on February 18.
India and South Africa had in January signed an MoU to transport cheetahs from the African country and reintroduce them in Kuno.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had released the first batch of eight spotted felines — five females and three males — from Namibia into a quarantine enclosure at the Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh on his 72nd birthday on September 17 last year.
On Feb 18, the cheetahs will be released in Kuno National Park by Union minister Bhupendra Yadav and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
A majority of the world's 7,000 cheetahs live in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana. Namibia has the world's largest population of cheetahs.
The cheetah is the only large carnivore that got completely wiped out from India, mainly due to overhunting and habitat loss. The last spotted feline died in 1948 in the Sal forests of Chhattisgarh's Koriya district.