Seventy-five years after India’s last cheetah died in 1947, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will introduce five of the world’s fastest animals in Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park on September 17, which also happens to be the PM’s birthday. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan confirmed the development on Tuesday.
All hotels and restaurants around Kuno have been booked by the district administration from September 14 to 20. Cheetahs would reach Kuno from Namibia, a day before Modi’s arrival.
The five cheetahs will be brought from Windhoek in Namibia to Jaipur and from there they will be shifted through airways to Palpur in Kuno. Two helipads have been developed inside the park.
These two helipads will be used for landing helicopters carrying the cheetahs while five helipads have been developed for the VIPs coming to attend the event.
Earlier, there were concerns that the project might get delayed since officers were unable to catch four leopards that were fenced inside the cheetah enclosure when it was built. However, three of them were caught later and the remaining one is not a problem, officials said.
Officers say everything else is in place for the reintroduction of cheetahs. The 500-hectare fenced-off area is still a hive of activity.
The transport logistics are being carefully planned to ensure that the fastest route is taken, with the fewest number of stops and transfers. The aerial distance is close to 9,000km but it’s the proverbial last mile that is causing creased eyebrows. The MP forest department has invited its staff to volunteer for a cheetah project posting.
The last cheetah died in the country in 1947 in Korea district in present day Chhattisgarh, and the species was declared extinct in the country.
The “African Cheetah Introduction Project in India” was conceived in 2009 and a plan to introduce the big cat by November last year in KNP suffered a setback due to the Covid-19 pandemic, officials said.