Kuno: A female cheetah is pregnant and expected to deliver cubs soon at the Kuno National Park (KNP) in Madhya Pradesh’s Sheopur district.
Chief Minister Mohan Yadav shared the information in a post on social media platform X late Saturday night and said this symbolises a big achievement for the ‘Cheetah Project’.
On September 17, 2022, Prime Minister Narendra Modi released eight cheetahs — five females and three males — brought from Namibia into enclosures at the KNP as part of the world’s first intercontinental translocation of the big cats, nearly eight decades after the cheetahs were hunted to extinction.
In February 2023, another 12 cheetahs were translocated to the national park in MP from South Africa as part of the Indian government’s project to reintroduce cheetahs into the country.
Earlier on September 19, 2024, India marked two years Of Project Cheetah. Since cheetahs were introduced in Kuno National Park, Madhya Pradesh, the country has at least 24 of the big cats. These striped animals were declared extinct from India in the early 1950s and the population in Kuno could herald the revival of the species in the country. These, however, are still early days for Project Cheetah.
Many glitches will need to be ironed out and lessons of the past two years put to good use before the project can be called a success. Today, all the surviving African animals, introduced to kick-start the project, and their progeny, live in acclimatising enclosures. Cheetahs are free-ranging predators. The test of their survival is in the wild. Creating a self-sustaining population will require weaning away a significant number from protective care. Kuno’s last free-ranging cheetah, seven-year-old Pawan, reportedly drowned in mysterious circumstances in August — the eighth adult animal, brought from Africa, to die since the project commenced.
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