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New Delhi: India and Botswana on Wednesday formally announced the translocation of eight Cheetahs from the African nation. This was done during the State visit of President Droupadi Murmu to the country. Thanking her counterpart President Duma Gideon Boko, President Murmu assured Mr. Boko that India will take good care of the animals.
Botswana will symbolically hand over the big cats to Ms. Murmu on Thursday. The two heads of State will preside over an event where five of the eight captured cheetahs will be released into a quarantine facility at Mokolodi nature reserve. This will mark the continuation of the exchange of the big cats from Botswana to India as part of the ‘Project Cheetah’.
The cheetahs that will soon be coming to India have been brought to the nature reserve, 10 km south of Gaborone, from Ghanzi town located in Kalahari desert. The rest of the cheetahs will join the quarantine centre soon and the eight cheetahs together are expected to reach India in a few months.
“It gives me special pleasure to note that Botswana is to reintroduce cheetahs into India under Project Cheetah, which is a unique wildlife conservation initiative of the Government of India,” Ms. Murmu said. “I am thankful to the President and people of Botswana for sending their Cheetahs to India. We will take good care of them,” the President said during a press briefing. President Murmu arrived for a three-day State visit to Botswana on Tuesday, the first visit by an Indian President to the country.
India has been translocating cheetahs from Africa as part of the Project Cheetah. A major conservation initiative undertaken by India recently to reintroduce cheetahs to India after they went extinct in the country in 1952.
The project began in 2022 with the introduction of cheetahs from Namibia and South Africa. It then expanded to bringing in cheetahs from Botswana. The translocations are part of a broader effort to restore the cheetah population and its natural habitat in India.
On September 17, 2022, Prime Minister Narendra Modi released eight cheetahs brought from Namibia into a special enclosure at Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh. This was a major event, which marked the first intercontinental relocation of a large wild carnivore species in the world.
India later imported 12 more cheetahs from South Africa in February 2023. Thanks to the conservation project India now has 27 cheetahs, including 16 born on Indian soil. Of them, 24 are at Kuno and three are at the Gandhi Sagar Wildlife Sanctuary.
The project though did see some setbacks as nineteen cheetahs, nine imported adults and 10 cubs born in India, have died from various causes since the project began. On a positive note, 26 cubs have been born in Kuno so far. After importing 20 animals from Africa, India currently has a net gain of seven cheetahs over the initial number as the project continues to bring about a success in conservation of the big cats, restoring their population and natural habitat in the country.
