As many as eight cheetahs will be flown to Madhya Pradesh's Kuno-Palpur National Park via Jaipur on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's birthday i.e. September 17.
According to an official, PM Modi will release three of these cheetahs into the park on the same day under the cheetah reintroduction programme. This comes almost 70 years after the animal went extinct in India.
Speaking about the process of the relocation, principal chief conservator of forest J S Chauhan said "After landing at Jaipur in a cargo flight from Namibia, the cheetahs will be flown by helicopter to Kuno park, around 400 km from the MP state capital Bhopal."
When asked about the number of helicopters needed to transport the cheetahs, Chauhan said it would depend on the type of aircraft deployed for the purpose.
If a smaller aircraft is deployed, there will be two sorties to shift the felines from Jaipur to Kuno-Palpur, he said. “This is being decided by the Centre,” Chauhan said.
“We have set up six small quarantine enclosures as per the legal mandate required during the shifting of animals from one continent to another,” the official said.
He said according to the protocol, the animals need to be quarantined for a month each before and after shifting from one continent to another.
The last cheetah died in the country in 1947 in Koriya district in present-day Chhattisgarh, which was earlier part of Madhya Pradesh, and the species was declared extinct from India in 1952.
The 'African Cheetah Introduction Project in India' was conceived in 2009. A plan to introduce the big cat in the KNP by November last year had suffered a setback due to the COVID-19 pandemic, officials said.
(With inputs from PTI)
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