BHOPAL: Twelve South African cheetahs were released into enclosures inside Kuno National Park at Sheopur district of Madhya Pradesh by the Union environment minister Bhupendra Yadav, chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and other guests on Saturday afternoon.
The Indian Air Force’s (IAF) C-17 Globemaster plane which took off from OR Tambo International Airport, Gauteng, South Africa carrying these cheetahs reached Maharajpur air base around 10.30am and they were taken to Kuno in choppers.
“An IAF C-17 aircraft carrying the second batch of cheetahs landed at AF Station Gwalior today, after a 10-hour flight from Johannesburg, South Africa, “IAF tweeted.
The second leg of their journey saw the cheetahs being flown from AF Station Gwalior to Kuno National Park, in three IAF Mi-17 helicopters after undertaking mandatory clearances along with African cheetah experts.
An #IAF C-17 aircraft carrying the second batch of 12 #Cheetahs landed at AF Station Gwalior today, after a 10 hour flight from Johannesburg, South Africa.
These Cheetahs will now be airlifted in IAF helicopters and released in the #KunoNationalPark. pic.twitter.com/Pk0YXcDtAV
— Indian Air Force (@IAF_MCC) February 18, 2023
Union ministers Narendra Singh Tomar and Jyotiraditya Scinida and NTCA chief SP Yadav were also present along with senior IFS officers of Madhya Pradesh.
Previously on September 17, 2022, eight cheetahs were brought to the Kuno National Park from Namibia in South Africa and were released by PM Modi on his birthday. Radio collars have been installed in all the cheetahs and monitored through satellite. Apart from this, a dedicated monitoring team behind each cheetah keeps monitoring the location for 24 hours.
According to an official release by the South African government 12 departed from South Africa for India as part of an initiative to expand the cheetah meta-population and to reintroduce cheetahs to a former range state following their local extinction due to over hunting and loss of habitat in the last century.
Earlier this year, the governments of South Africa and India signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on cooperation on the re-introduction of cheetah to India.
The MoU facilitates cooperation between the two countries to establish a viable and secure cheetah population in India; promotes conservation and ensures that expertise is shared and exchanged, and capacity built, to promote cheetah conservation. This includes human-wildlife conflict resolution, capture and translocation of wildlife and community participation in conservation in the two countries.
