8 cheetahs to fly from Namibia to Kuno Park in Madhya Pradesh

Bhopal/New Delhi: Eight cheetahs from Namibia are set to leave for their new home in Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh in a chartered flight on Friday, unfolding a historic event.

Five female and three male cheetahs will make an 11-hour, transcontinental journey from Namibia's capital Windhoek to Kuno National Park on September 16 and 17, a press release by the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF), a wildlife conservation body that is coordinating the cheetah reintroduction project in India, has said.

"The mission to move the cheetahs will begin on the afternoon of Friday, September 16, with the transfer of cats from the CCF centre to the Hosea Kutako International Airport in Windhoek, Namibia’s capital.

After a brief ceremony to acknowledge Namibia’s donation and the significance of the mission, the cheetahs will be loaded onto a private B747 jet.

According to details released by the CCF, "The plane will fly overnight and land in Jaipur, India, by daybreak. The cheetahs will be transferred from Jaipur to Kuno National Park by helicopter."

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to release the cheetahs in Kuno National Park on September 17, coinciding with his 72nd birthday.

The introduction of cheetahs in India is being done under Project Cheetah, which is the world’s first inter-continental large wild carnivore translocation project. 

The Prime Minister’s Office said that cheetahs will help in the restoration of open forest and grassland ecosystems in India. This will help conserve biodiversity and enhance ecosystem services like water security, carbon sequestration and soil moisture conservation, benefiting the society at large.

"This effort, in line with the Prime Minister’s commitment towards environment protection and wildlife conservation, will also lead to enhanced livelihood opportunities for the local community through eco-development and ecotourism activities," the PMO said.

These cheetahs will be the first of the few in the founder population that will be reintroduced in the 744 sq km national park in Sheopur district in Madhya Pradesh.

The key objective of the reintroduction of cheetahs into the park is to have a wild meta-population of cheetahs in the country in the next 15 years.

The eight Namibian cheetahs arriving in Kuno are aged between two and five-and-a-half years.

A CCF statement said that each animal has been vaccinated, fitted with a satellite collar and kept in isolation in the CCF centre in Otjiwarongo, Namibia.

The CCF said that the Boeing 747 "jumbo jet" aircraft that is transporting the eight cheetahs to India is a passenger jet. It has been modified to carry cages containing the cheetahs.

Veterinarians will accompany the cheetahs during their journey to monitor their health.

"For more than 12 years, I have consulted with the Government of India and their scientists on how to bring cheetahs back to their landscape, and now, it is happening!" Dr Laurie Marker, founder and executive director of the CCF, as quoted in the press release.

The cheetah reintroduction project by the Government of India was mooted in 2009.

Thrilled at the prospect of the state receiving rare wild guests, Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan in a Twitter post said, "With the arrival of Cheetahs, the Trinity of Tigers, Leopards and Cheetahs will be complete in Madhya Pradesh."

Cheetahs went extinct in India in 1952, officially.