The second batch of 12 cheetahs will arrive in Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park (KNP) from South Africa on February 18. A senior forest official gave this information on Saturday. Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife) JS Chauhan said that as per the current plan, 12 more cheetahs are being brought to KNP on February 18.
He said that before being taken to Kuno, the cheetahs would be taken from South Africa to Gwalior. The official said he was unaware of the number of male and female cheetahs in the batch of 12.
India Will Get 12 More Cheetahs
The government is working on the second phase of Project Cheetah and has tied up with South Africa. Cheetahs will be brought from South Africa. Under Project Cheetah, eight cheetahs were airlifted from Namibia to India. In September last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi released these cheetahs in the Kuno Palpur National Park in Madhya Pradesh.
He said the cheetahs would be kept in isolation for a month per the rules. Prime Minister Narendra Modi released the first batch of eight cheetahs – five females and three males – from Namibia into a quarantine enclosure at KNP on his 72nd birthday on September 17.
Cheetahs are being reintroduced in India nearly seven decades after the species went extinct. The last cheetah in the country died in 1947 in the Koriya district of present-day Chhattisgarh, and the species was declared extinct from India in 1952.
