The South African government on Thursday reached a deal with India to relocate dozens more African cheetahs to the Asian country over the next ten years, reported The Wire.
“An initial batch of 12 cheetah are scheduled to be flown from South Africa to India in February 2023,” South Africa’s environmental department said in a statement.
The cheetahs will be sent to the Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh, which is already home to eight African cheetahs translocated from Namibia. Last year in September, Kuno had received eight cheetahs including three male and five female big cats from Namibia.
“The plan is to translocate a further 12 annually for the next eight to 10 years,” the South African department added.
The second tranche of cheetahs is expected to arrive in India by February-March, taking the total number of big cats from Africa in the national park to 20.
An Indian government official said a team of experts would visit South Africa next month to examine the health of the 12 cheetahs, who have been kept in quarantine facilities in two different locations. Three cheetahs are in quarantine in Phinda in KwaZulu-Natal province and nine in Rooiberg in Limpopo Province since July 2022.
Barbara Creecy, the South African minister of environment, forestry and fisheries, had given a nod to India’s proposal to translocate cheetahs in November last year. The authorities, however, had been waiting for a clearance for a formal deal between the two countries by the South African president.
The Indian government officially declared cheetah as an extinct animal in 1952. The cheetahs were last recorded in the country in 1948, when three cheetahs were shot dead in Chhattisgarh’s Koriya District.
Last year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that India has a chance to restore an element of biodiversity that had been lost long ago.
