On September 17, 2022, three cheetahs were released by PM Modi into Kuno National Park. The PM, wearing a fedora, was also seen taking pictures of the cats with a high-end camera. He let two cheetahs out of the first enclosure, then let another out of the enclosure, about 70 meters away.
Around eight in the morning, the aircraft carrying cheetahs touched down at the Indian Air Force’s (IAF) Maharajpura airbase, Gwalior. Jyotiraditya Scindia, the minister for civil aviation, supervised the whole process of taking the cheetahs to the chopper provided by the air force, which then took them to the Kuno National Park.
Mr Scindia tweeted some images from the airfield and said, “The cheetahs have arrived in their new home- KUNO – heavenly habitat for our cats. Today is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s birthday, and he will unleash the wild cats into the park’s quarantine areas.”
Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the state’s chief minister, stated, “that there was no better gift for Madhya Pradesh to receive on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s birthday than this, referring to the ‘historic’ transport of the wild cats from Namibia to the Kuno National Park as the largest wildlife incident of the century. According to him, this will significantly increase tourism in the state, particularly in the Kuno-Palpur region.”
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The Landing of Cheetahs
The majestic Asiatic cheetahs who once lived in India became domestically extinct in 1952. These majestic cats are transported from Namibia to India as an initiative of International Translocation.
Amongst the cheetahs are five females whose ages range from two to five years, as stated by the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF), an international NPO with its headquarters in Namibia. The NPO is purely dedicated to protecting these fastest land species.
According to Dr Laurie Marker, the top Cheetah expert in the world and a passenger on the jet carrying the large animals said, “The cats are very little sedated but not tranquillized. They all appear fantastic.”
Radio collars are attached to keep track of the movements of Cheetahs so they can be tracked through satellite. Each cheetah has a dedicated monitoring team that will cater to its needs and monitor all its movements.
The national park, situated in the Sheopur district of Madhya Pradesh, is approximately 165 kilometres from Gwalior. The main reason behind the choice of this particular park as their residence is that it has plenty of prey and grasslands. However, there are still some important things to take care of; the major one is that they may have issues in adjusting to a new environment altogether and might face some issues with other leopards present there already.
According to the officials, The “African Cheetah Introduction Project in India” was founded in the year 2009, but because of the COVID-19 epidemic, this plan has been delayed. These mighty cats were supposed to be introduced in KNP in November 2021.
