The wild cheetahs were driven from a game park north of Namibia’s capital Windhoek on Friday to board a chartered Boeing 747 dubbed the “cat plane” for an 11-hour flight. Prime Minister Narendra Modi welcomes them on Saturday, on his 72nd birthday. It will open the gates of Kuno National Park, a new sanctuary created for the cats, 320 kilometers (200 miles) south of New Delhi. The 750 square kilometer (290 sq mi) protected park was chosen as a home because of its abundant prey and grasslands. The project is the world’s first transcontinental 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 even more excited because it is happening in the 75th year of Indian independence.” Critics have warned that Namibian cheetahs may struggle to adapt to the Indian habitat and may clash with the significant number of leopards already present. But the organizers are not worried. One of the cheetahs in a transport cage at the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Otjiwarongo, Namibia, before being flown to India. Photo: Dirk Heinrich/AP “Cheetahs are very adaptable and [I’m] assuming they will adapt well to this environment,” said Dr Laurie Marker, founder of the Namibia-based charity Cheetah Conservation Fund, which was central to the logistics of the project. “So I don’t have much to worry about.” The project has been in progress for more than a decade. The initial discussion began in the 1990s, he told AFP. India was once home to the Asiatic cheetah, but was declared extinct there in 1952. The critically endangered subspecies, which once roamed throughout the Middle East, Central Asia and India, is now found – in very small numbers – only in Iran . New Delhi has been working since 2020 to reintroduce the animals after the high court announced that African cheetahs, a different subspecies, could be settled in a “carefully selected location” on an experimental basis. The five females and three males, aged two and a half to five, will be fitted with a satellite collar. It is 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 relocation. Photo: Cheetah Conservation Fund/Reuters Negotiations are underway for a similar transfer from South Africa, a government official said Friday, with veterinarians suggesting 12 cats could be moved. Cheetahs have become extinct in India mainly due to habitat loss and hunting for their distinctive markings. An Indian prince, Maharaja Ramanuj Pratap Singh Deo, is widely believed to have killed the last three recorded cheetahs in India in the late 1940s. One of the oldest species of big cat, with ancestors dating back some 8.5 million years, cheetahs once roamed widely across Asia and Africa in large numbers, the Cheetah Conservation Fund said. But today only about 7,000 remain, mostly on the African savannas. The cheetah is listed globally as “vulnerable” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s red list of threatened species. In North Africa and Asia it is “critically endangered”. Their survival is mainly threatened by shrinking natural habitat and loss of prey due to human hunting, land development for other purposes and climate change.
