On Saturday morning, an Indian Air Force (IAF) plane carrying 12 cheetahs from South Africa landed in Madhya Pradeshs Gwalior, from where they will be transported to the Kuno National Park (KNP) in Sheopur district, about 165 kilometres away, and released into quarantine enclosures.These cheetahs comprise of seven males and five females, the second set of big cats coming to India. The first group of 8 cheetahs have been released to Kuno National Park on September 17.“A plane carrying cheetahs from South Africa landed at the Gwalior airport today morning,” according to an official statement. After the clearance procedure in Gwalior, these cheetahs will be flown to the Kuno National Park in an IAF helicopter, another official said.They will be unloaded at Kuno National Park around noon, after which MP Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Union Minister for Environment and Forests Bhupender Yadav will release them into quarantine bomas, he added. These animals had taken off from the O R Tambo International Airport in Gauteng, South Africa, shortly before midnight on a journey to their new home thousands of miles away aboard an IAF transport aircraft.Uttam Sharma, the Director of Kuno National Park, stated that ten quarantine bomas have been established for South African cheetahs. Two pairs of cheetahs would be housed in two of these facilities. “We have finished our preparations for the big cats,” he said in a statement.The intercontinental movement of these fastest land animals, first from Namibia and now from South Africa, is part of Indias ambitious cheetah reintroduction programme. The last cheetah in the country died in 1947 in the Koriya district of present-day Chhattisgarh, and the species was declared extinct in 1952.According to reports, a South African delegation visited Kuno National Park in early September last year to inspect the wildlife sanctuarys arrangements for housing the cheetahs. Last month, India and South Africa signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the translocation of the mammals. South Africa has given these large cats to India. According to the wildlife expert, India must pay USD 3,000 to the African nation for the capture of each cheetah before they are translocated.India had planned to airlift these South African cheetahs in August of last year, but was unable to do so due to a stalemate in the signing of a formal translocation agreement between the two countries. On September 17, last year, PM Modi released eight cheetahs flown in from Namibia into the Kuno National Park amid much fanfare, kicking off the process for the revival of their population in India, where these distinctively spotted cat species became extinct seven decades ago.The Namibian cheetahs, five females and three males, are currently in hunting enclosures at the park before being released into the wild. Some experts expressed their concern about the health of the South African cheetahs, who have been quarantined in their home country since July 15 in preparation for their transfer to India, due to the delay in signing the Memorandum of Understanding.According to Indian wildlife laws, a month-long quarantine is required before importing animals, and they must be kept in isolation for another 30 days after arrival. According to the experts, the metapopulation of spotted animals in South Africa has increased to 504 from 217 in 2011. Former Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh launched Project Cheetah under the UPA government in 2009 with the goal of reintroducing wild cats to India.South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana are home to the majority of the worlds 7,000 cheetahs. According to the data, Namibia has the worlds largest cheetah population.
