12 African cheetahs reach India, PM welcomes

The Prime Minister Narendra Modi has welcomed the new batch of 12 cheetahs in Kuno National Park. 

Quoting a tweet by Union Minister for Environment, Forest & Climate Change, Bhupender Yadav, the Prime Minister tweeted;

“India’s wildlife diversity receives a boost with this development.”

The cheetahs had departed from South Africa on Friday for India as part of an initiative to expand the cheetah meta-population and to reintroduce cheetahs to a former range state following their local extinction due to over hunting and loss of habitat in the last century.

Earlier this year, the governments of South Africa and India signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Cooperation on the Re-introduction of Cheetah to India.  The MoU facilitates cooperation between the two countries to establish a viable and secure cheetah population in India; promotes conservation and ensures that expertise is shared and exchanged, and capacity built, to promote cheetah conservation. This includes human-wildlife conflict resolution, capture and translocation of wildlife and community participation in conservation in the two countries. 

Conservation translocations have become a common practice to conserve species and restore ecosystems.  South Africa plays an active role in providing founders for the population and range expansion of iconic species such as cheetahs.