Eight cheetahs – five females and three males – are being transferred to India from Namibia, Africa. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will release these eight big cats in Kuno National Park (KNP) in Madhya Pradesh on his birthday, September 17. To celebrate this arrival, PM Modi will also receive the Goodwill Ambassadors from the ‘Land of the Brave’.

The cheetahs are brought in as part of Project Cheetah to reintroduce the big cat to India after it was officially declared extinct in 1952 and the last cheetah was killed in India in 1947. These cheetahs will arrive at Gwalior Airport from Namibia in a customized Boeing 747-400 aircraft. You will be transferred to the KNP heliport in an Indian Air Force Chinook helicopter.

According to the Prime Minister’s Office, Project Cheetah is the world’s first intercontinental translocation project for large wild carnivores.

The project was approved by the Supreme Court in 2020 as a pilot program to reintroduce the species in the country. The concept of bringing back cheetahs was first introduced in 2009 by conservationists alongside the Africa-headquartered Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF), which works to save the big cat in the wild.

A Memorandum of Understanding was signed between India and the Republic of Namibia in July 2020, in which the Namibian government agreed to donate eight cats to launch the program.

According to a statement released by PMO, “Cheetahs will help restore open forest and grassland ecosystems in India. This will help conserve biodiversity and improve ecosystem services such as water security, carbon sequestration and soil moisture preservation, benefiting society at large.”

While cheetahs were well documented during the Mughal era, British rule viewed their hunt as a sport, which eventually led to their extinction. Other factors also contributed to cheetah extinction, such as habitat loss due to increasing human populations, which also put pressure on forests.

According to a government statement, the main purpose of reintroducing cheetahs in the country is now to develop healthy metapopulations in India that will allow the cheetah to fulfill its functional role as a top predator.

According to the reintroduction plan, after Madhya Pradesh, cheetahs will be placed in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. While the first three cheetahs will be released in Kuno National Park, the rest will be released in different phases. The central government plans to introduce 50 cheetahs over the next five years.