South Africa announced on Thursday (January 26th) that it had reached an agreement to transfer more than 100 cheetahs to India as part of an ambitious project to reintroduce spotted felines to that country.
The South African Department of the Environment has announced that a first group of twelve cheetahs will be flown to India next month, which will join eight others imported from Namibia last September. "The plan is to relocate twelve more each year for the next eight to 10 years," to help sustain a "viable and secure cheetah population there," the ministry said in a statement.
India was once home to Asiatic cheetahs, a subspecies declared extinct in 1952 for lack of suitable habitats and because they were hunted down by hunters for their spotted skins. Efforts to reintroduce the cheetah, the world's fastest land animal, gained momentum in 2020 when India's Supreme Court gave the green light to the import of African cheetahs, a different subspecies, "into a place carefully chosen" and on an experimental basis.
The negotiations for this agreement with South Africa were long and initially provided for the arrival last August of the first cheetahs, which have since been waiting in quarantine. "The cheetahs are still doing well," said Adrian Tordiffe, a wildlife veterinarian at the University of Pretoria involved in the project.
According to authorities, the previous transfer of cheetahs from Namibia to India was the first ever relocation of cheetahs from one continent to another. These cheetahs were released in Kuno National Park, 320 km south of New Delhi, known for its abundant prey and grasslands.
