On Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will release the cheetahs in the Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh.
New Delhi: Almost 70 years after Cheetahs went extinct in India, the country is all set to reintroduce the big cat on September 17. As many as eight cheetahs, five females and three males, will soon walk on Indian land after being brought from Namibia as a part of a special arrangement.
On Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will release the cheetahs in the Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh. The day coincides with Modi’s birthday.
According to reports, on Thursday, a modified passenger B747 Jumbo Jet, painted with the face of a tiger, landed in Namibia’s capital of Windhoek and will soon ferry the big cats.
Sharing a small video on Twitter, Union Minister for Environment, Forest & Climate Change Bhupendra Yadav wrote, “Just 1 Day to go…The fastest sprinter on Earth 🐆will make a return to India tomorrow after 70 long years. #Cheetahs are coming…”
OBJECTIVES BEHIND REINTRODUCING CHEETAHS
- To establish breeding cheetah populations in safe habitats across its historical range and manage them as a metapopulation.
- To use cheetahs as a charismatic flagship and umbrella species to garner resources for restoring open forest and savanna systems that will benefit biodiversity and ecosystem services from these ecosystems.
- To enhance India’s capacity to sequester carbon through ecosystem restoration activities in cheetah conservation areas and thereby contribute towards the global climate change mitigation goals.
- To use the ensuing opportunity for eco-development and eco-tourism to enhance local community livelihoods.
- To manage any conflict by cheetah or other wildlife with local communities within cheetah conservation areas expediently through compensation, awareness, and management actions to win community support.
Earlier, the ministry had said, “The introduction of the cheetah is not only a species recovery programme but an effort to restore ecosystems with a lost element that has played a significant role in their evolutionary history, allow ecosystems to provide services to their full potential.”
The word cheetah is of Sanskrit origin, the ministry said, adding, “the cheetah finds mention in the ancient texts such as the Vedas and Puranas; it is indeed ironical that the species is currently extinct in India”.
