Plan to return cheetah to India okayed,three sites identified

The cheetah will run again in India. The Ministry of Environment and Forests today cleared a Rs 300-crore plan to raise 18 cheetahs at three sites.

The cheetah will run again in India. The Ministry of Environment and Forests today cleared a Rs 300-crore plan to raise 18 cheetahs at three sites six in each in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

The Ministry of Environment and Forests has asked Iran to provide the cheetahs. The other option being considered are African cheetahs being bred in Sharjah.

The cheetah has been extinct in India since the 1960s,the only mammal other than the Sumatran Rhino to be wiped out from the country.

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Last year,wildlife experts M K Ranjitsinh and Divyabhanu Singh,affiliated with the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI),proposed reintroducing the cheetah in India. Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh pushed the project and sought a technical report from the WTI and Wildlife Institute of India (WII) on possible sites where the cheetah could be reintroduced.

The report,submitted today,identified Nauradehi sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh (1,197 sq km),Shahgarh on the India-Pakistan border in Rajasthan (4,000 sq km) and Kuno Palpur in Madhya Pradesh (6,800 sq km).

We need to bring cheetahs to all three sites at once to create a meta-population. It will cost about Rs 100 crore to restore each site. This will include moving out settlements,introducing prey and all-round restorative inputs for the site, said WII scientist Yadavendra Jhala.

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