India to import more Cheetahs from South Africa by end of 2023: Project head

The Indian government is planning to spend crore of rupees on the import of Cheetahs from South Africa once again. According to SP Yadav, the head of Project Cheetah, this initiative will involve bringing cheetahs from South Africa and releasing them into the Gandhi Sagar Wildlife Sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh.  However, Yadav did not share any specific date when the Cheetahs will be imported to India, he said by the end of this year, the big cats may come into India.

It's mentioned in the Cheetah Action Plan that Kuno has a carrying capacity of about 20 cheetahs. Right now, there are 15 cheetahs including a cub, and when we will bring the next batch of cheetahs in the country, it will be at some other place. We are preparing two such sites in Madhya Pradesh, one is the Gandhi Sagar Sanctuary, and the other is Nauradehi. Yadav said that the next batch of cheetahs will be imported from South Africa and introduced into Madhya Pradesh's Gandhi Sagar Wildlife Sanctuary, which will be ready to welcome the spotted felines by the end of the year.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated Project Cheetah in India last year by releasing a group of big cats brought from Namibia into an enclosure at Madhya Pradesh's Kuno National Park on September 17. Project Cheetah marks its one-year anniversary on Sunday. In an interview with PTI, SP Yadav, Additional Director General of Forests at the Environment Ministry, emphasised that the project's focus in its second year would be on breeding these animals.

The site preparation at the Gandhi Sagar Wildlife Sanctuary is going on in full swing, I'm expecting that it will be completed by the end of November or December. Once we get the report of completion, we'll go to the site, we'll evaluate it from all preparation points of view. And after December, we'll take a call on bringing cheetahs, he said.

Yadav acknowledged that one of the biggest challenges faced in the first year of managing cheetahs in India was the unexpected development of winter coats by some cheetahs during the Indian summer and monsoon, in anticipation of the African winter (June to September). Even African experts did not expect it, the senior forest official said.

Some cheetahs did not develop winter coats and remained infection-free. They are better suited to Indian conditions. Therefore, in our next cheetah import, we will be very careful in animal selection. We will prefer animals that either do not develop winter coats or develop thinner ones, the head of Project Cheetah said.