Five female and three male cheetahs are set to arrive from Namibia at the Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh early Saturday where wildlife scientists hope they will serve as “founders” of a new cheetah population in India.

The eight cheetahs will fly aboard a special Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet aircraft from Windhoek, Namibia, into Jaipur, Rajasthan, and then ride a helicopter into Kuno where Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to oversee their release into the wildlife sanctuary. The release date coincides with Modi’s birthday. 

Their release will mark a key step in the Union environment ministry’s plan to reintroduce into India the only large carnivore to have gone extinct since Indian Independence. Wildlife experts say habitat loss, depleting prey, and sport hunting contributed to its loss. India declared the cheetah locally extinct in 1952 after the last one was shot by a maharaja in 1947.

“This is a step towards correcting an ecological wrong,” Sanjay Shukla, the member secretary of the Central Zoo Authority, an arm of the environment ministry, said on Thursday. The reintroduction of cheetahs, he said, will help restore lost ecological balance in India’s grassland landscapes.

Source: https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/cheetahs-set-to-arrive-from-namibia-at-kuno-national-park-in-madhya-pradesh/cid/1886895