The big cats were brought in from Namibia as a part of a special agreement to reintroduce cheetahs in India almost 70 years after they went extinct.
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday released three of the eights cheetahs at the Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh. The big cats were brought in from Namibia as a part of a special agreement to reintroduce cheetahs in India almost 70 years after they went extinct.
Here’s a quick look at the cheetahs that were brought in from Namibia:
The Female Cheetahs
As many as five female and three male cheetahs were brought in from Namibia onboard a special Boeing 747 ‘Jumbo Jet’ aircraft which had a face of a tiger painted on it.
The female cheetahs are aged between two and five years while the male big cats are between 4.5 years and 5.5 years. According to Namibia officials, the first, a two-year-old cheetah, was found with its brother near Gobabis in south-eastern Namibia at a waterhole. The two cheetahs were in poor health and were probably orphaned due to a wild fire which had broken out a few weeks before they were found. The Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) rescued them and that’s where the duo was living since September 2020.
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The second cheetah, a female aged between three and four years, was captured from a farm near the CCF centre in July 2020. The third was born at a private game reserve and its mother was a part of CCF’s rehabilitation programme and was released in the wild two years back.
Officials said the fourth and the fifth cheetahs are around the same age: five. One of them was found in 2017 in a bad state and the farm workers who found her nursed her back before she was taken to the CCF centre in January 2018. The fifth female cheetah was captured from a farm near Kamanjab village in north-western Namibia by CCF.
The Male Cheetahs
A total of three male cheetahs were brought from Namibia of which, two are brothers aged around 5.5 years. They have been living at the CCF reserve in Namibia’s Otjiwarongo since July 2021. The third male cheetah, aged around 4.5 years, was born in the Erindi Private Game Reserve in March 2018.
The authorities said each cheetah has been vaccinated, fitted with a satellite collar and kept in isolation at the CCF centre in Namibia. They added that the big cats were selected based on an assessment of health, wild disposition, hunting skills and ability to contribute genetics “that will result in a strong founder population”.
