India and Namibia signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to reintroduce African cheetahs in India.
The MoU was signed by Union Minister for Environment, Forests and Climate Change Bhupender Yadav and the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Namibia Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, in New Delhi.
The MoU will pave the way for translocation of a few cheetahs from Namibia to India.
The cheetahs went extinct in India by 1952.
They will be first kept in a special five square kilometre enclosure set up within the Kuno National Park itself for regular health check-ups and monitoring for six months before being released into the wild.
The animal will return to a wild enclosure in India 69 years after the last recorded cheetah was hunted down in Chhattisgarh in 1952.
