New Delhi: 12 cheetahs will come from South Africa to Kuno National Park in the Sheopur district of Madhya Pradesh today i.e. on Saturday. The Galaxy Globemaster C17 aircraft of the Indian Air Force will reach Gwalior around 10 am today. With the arrival of cheetahs, the number of cheetahs in this park will increase to 20. A study says that the danger to the people living around these cheetahs is very less. There are seven male and five female cheetahs in this group of 12 cheetahs being brought from South Africa.
Earlier, Prime Minister Narendra Modi released eight cheetahs brought from Namibia in isolation in special enclosures by opening the doors of wooden cages by turning a lever from a platform in Kuno National Park on 17 September as part of a project to revive the cheetah population in India. , In which there are five female and three male cheetahs.
The last cheetah in India died in 1947 in the Koriya district of present-day Chhattisgarh and the species was declared extinct in the country in 1952. According to the project’s risk management plan written by Vincent van der Merwe, coordinator of the cheetah metapopulation in South Africa, there is no record of these cheetahs attacking humans. Therefore, the danger from these cheetahs to the people living around Kuno National Park is very low.
These cheetahs will be taken to Kuno National Park, about 165 km away by Indian Air Force helicopters, 30 minutes after reaching Gwalior on Saturday morning by an Indian Air Force transport aircraft from South Africa.
An expert had told that after reaching the Kuno National Park at around 12 noon, these cheetahs would be kept in separate enclosures for half an hour (at 12.30 pm). An official of the Madhya Pradesh Public Relations Department said, “Elaborate arrangements have been made to take care of these cheetahs.
To keep 12 cheetahs in separate enclosures, 10 separate enclosures have been prepared. Of these, 8 new and 2 old separate housing enclosures have been converted. Besides this, two isolation wards have been prepared. Shades have been made for shade in all the separate housing enclosures. Water arrangements have been made for the leopards. He said that after landing 12 cheetahs from the helicopter, they would be brought to separate habitat enclosures. The distance from the helipad to the isolated enclosures is about one kilometer.
South Africa has donated these big cats to India. But India has to pay USD 3,000 for the capture of every cheetah to the African nation before they are translocated, said the wildlife expert.
India had planned to airlift these South African cheetahs in August last year but couldn’t do so due to a delay in signing a formal translocation agreement between the two countries.
Due to the delay in the MoU signing for the inter-continental translocation of these big cats, some experts had in December expressed concern over the health of the South African cheetahs as these animals have been quarantined in their home country since July 15 in anticipation of their transfer to India.
