India to welcome a dozen cheetahs from South Africa

A dozen wild cheetahs will arrive in India from South Africa this weekend. AP

A dozen wild cheetahs will arrive in India from South Africa this weekend under New Delhi’s ambitious plans to reintroduce the species.

The wild cats — seven males and five females — will begin their journey to India's Kuno National Park, where eight such felines were transferred from Namibia last year, on Friday.

South Africa’s environment ministry and New Delhi signed a deal last month for the transfer.

New Delhi has been lobbying African nations over the ambitious project in an effort to reintroduce the species to the country more than seven decades after it was declared extinct.

The two countries have agreed to promote conservation and ensure expertise is shared and exchanged for capacity building and promoting Cheetah conservation.

A team of experts from South Africa had visited the sanctuary to see the arrangements.

Officials at the national park have set up quarantine enclosures for the South African cheetahs.

“We have completed our preparations to receive the big cats on Saturday,” Uttam Sharma, director of Kuno National Park, said.

While South Africa has donated the big cats to India, New Delhi has reportedly paid $3,000 for the capture of every cheetah.

Experts have anticipated that prolonged quarantine might affect their fitness and urged them to be moved to the sanctuary at the earliest.

The negotiations with South Africa were in progress for years amid scepticism by many Indian wildlife experts, who termed it a vanity project.

It is believed India had more than 10,000 cheetahs during the reign of Mughal emperor Akbar in the 15th century, about one-tenth of which were kept at his court for hunting other animals.

But their population dwindled by the 1900s following bounty hunting by colonial British rulers and former Indian kings.

The last three cats were hunted down in 1947 by Maharaja Ramanuj Pratap Singh Deo, a king in central India’s Koriya region.

The Indian government declared the Asiatic cheetahs extinct in the country in 1952.