12 South African cheetahs to land in India on February 18, join 8 Namibian cheetahs at Kuno National Park

The five female and seven male cheetahs will be transferred from the Gwalior air base, where they will land Saturday morning, to Kuno National Park in an MI 17 helicopter

One of the seven male cheetahs being brought to Kuno. (Express Photo)

Written by: Esha Roy

4 min readNew DelhiFeb 17, 2023 02:44 AM IST First published on: Feb 16, 2023 at 12:03 PM IST

Union Minister for Environment, Forests and Climate Change Bhupender Yadav Thursday announced that 12 more cheetahs would be flown in from South Africa on Saturday (February 18) and that ten quarantine enclosures have been created for them at Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh, where eight such felines were brought from Namibia last year.

A military C 17 aircraft left the Hindon air base in Uttar Pradesh at 6 am Wednesday for South Africa to pick up the cheetahs. A team of South African and Indian veterinarians and wildlife experts will accompany them on the way back.

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The five female and seven male cheetahs will then be transferred from the Gwalior air base, where they will land Saturday morning, to Kuno National Park in an MI 17 helicopter.

An MoU was signed between India and South Africa in January this year for the translocation of the 12 cheetahs and subsequent translocations of 10-12 cheetahs annually until a sustainable cheetah population is established in India.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi released the first batch of eight cheetahs at Kuno National Park on September 17, 2022. They have completed their quarantine period in bomas (quarantine enclosures for animals) and have been released into a wider 6-sq km enclosure in which they have been hunting prey every three-four days – a promising sign that they are adapting to India, said ministry officials Wednesday.

Officials added that an additional ten enclosures of 50×30 metres had been built at the park to accommodate the cheetahs.

Three of the South African cheetahs are coming from Phinda Wildlife Reserve, while the other nine are from Rooiberg, where they had been kept in quarantine for the last year in anticipation of the move. These cheetahs range from 18 months to four years of age.

Officials added that a cheetah action plan had already been put in place, and the ministry was working on a draft proposal for declaring the area around Kuno an eco-sensitive zone.

Professor Adrian Tordiff, a South African veterinary wildlife specialist with University of Pretoria, which has partnered with the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) in the cheetah translocation project, will also take the trip to India.

“Three of the twelve Cheetahs were from Phinda nature reserve, and after having been kept in bomas last year when we had anticipated their relocation, they were subsequently released back into the reserve. They were recaptured in December and brought back to their quarantine bomas for their translocation this year. The other nine had been kept in their bomas for the last few months. They were captured from all parts of South Africa. So it would not have been easy to release and then recapture them. But our veterinary specialist kept them in excellent health. All the South African cheetahs are wild,” said Prof. Tordiff.

Since the cheetahs were vaccinated last year and a range of blood tests and other medical tests were carried out, there would be no repeat of this process, said Prof Tordiff. “On the day they will be placed in their crates, they will receive internal and external antiparasitic treatment,” he added.

Prof Tordiff said that Namibian and South African cheetahs are close genetically and many South African cheetahs had originally been brought from Namibia as a part of a translocation programme.

“We don’t anticipate any challenges on that front. Moreover, the Namibian cheetahs have adapted very well to Kuno. Cheetahs have high adaptability to all habitats, from dry arid grassland to wet and forested regions. That is why they are found in different habitats in South Africa. The notion that cheetahs can only flourish in the high grasslands in East Africa is wrong. The prey base in Kuno is robust, and the chital is easy prey for the African cheetah – much easier than the springbok, impala or the gazelle, which happens to be the second fastest animal after the cheetah,” said Prof Tordiff.