Eight Namibian cheetahs have been flown to India, part of an ambitious project to reintroduce the big cats after they were driven to extinction decades ago, officials and veterinarians said.
The wild cheetahs were flown by road from a game park north of Namibia’s capital Windhoek on Friday to board a chartered Boeing 747 called a “Cat plane” for an 11-hour flight.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will welcome them on Saturday, his 72nd birthday.
It will open the gates of Kuno National Park, a new sanctuary created for the cats, 320 km (200 miles) south of New Delhi.
The 750 square kilometer (290 sq mi) protected park was selected as a home because of its abundant dams and pastures.
The project is the world’s first intercontinental translocation of cheetahs, the world’s fastest land animal, according to Indian High Commissioner to Namibia, Prashant Agrawal.
“This is historic, a world first – it’s a game changer,” he said. “We are all the more excited because it is happening in India’s 75th year of independence.”
Critics have warned that Namibian cheetahs may struggle to adapt to the Indian habitat and may clash with the large numbers of leopards already there. But the organizers are not worried.
One of the cheetahs in a transport cage at the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Otjiwarongo, Namibia, before being transported to India. Photo: Dirk Heinrich/AP
“Cheetahs are very adaptable and [I’m] assuming they will adapt well to that environment,” said Dr Laurie Marker, founder of the Namibia-based charity Cheetah Conservation Fund, which has been instrumental in the logistics of the project. “So I don’t have too many concerns “.
The project has been in the works for more than a decade. The initial discussion began in the 1990s, he told AFP.
India was once the home of the Asiatic cheetah, but it was declared extinct there in 1952. The endangered subspecies, which once ranged across the Middle East, Central Asia and India, is now found only in very small number, in Iran.
New Delhi has been working since 2020 to reintroduce the animals after the apex court announced that African cheetahs, a different subspecies, could be set up at a “carefully selected site” on an experimental basis.
The five females and three males, between two and five and a half years old, will be equipped with a satellite collar.
They are a donation from the government of Namibia, one of the few countries in Africa where the creature survives in the wild.
Vets draw blood from one of Namibia’s cheetahs in preparation for the transfer. Photograph: Cheetah Conservation Fund/Reuters
Negotiations are underway for a similar translocation from South Africa, a government official said Friday, and veterinarians suggest 12 cats could be moved.
Cheetahs became extinct in India mainly due to habitat loss and hunting for their distinctive spotted coats.
An Indian prince, Maharaja Ramanuj Pratap Singh Deo, is believed to have killed the last three cheetahs recorded in India in the late 1940s.
One of the oldest of the big cat species, with ancestors dating back about 8.5 million years, cheetahs once roamed Asia and Africa in large numbers, the Cheetah Conservation Fund said .
But today only about 7,000 remained, mostly in the African savannas.
The cheetah is globally listed as “vulnerable” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species. It is “critically endangered” in North Africa and Asia.
Their survival is threatened primarily by the decline of natural habitat and loss of prey due to human hunting, land development for other purposes, and climate change.