A 10-hour flight, helicopter ride, and quarantine: The journey of cheetahs from Namibia to India

Come Saturday, 17 September, cheetahs will be back in India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious plan to reintroduce the world’s fastest cat will see the light of day on his birthday. Seventy years after extinction in India, eight cheetahs will be brought to India from Africa’s Namibia. They will be then taken to Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno-Palpur National Park.

We take a look at the grand plan to translocate the spotted felines.

How will the cheetahs be brought to India?

The African cats – five females and three males between four to six years of age – will be brought to India on a chartered cargo flight, which will take off from Windhoek, the capital of Namibia on 16 September. After over a 10-hour journey, the cheetahs will land in Rajasthan’s Jaipur on Saturday morning.

On the flight, the radio-collared animals will be kept in cages measuring 114 cm X 118 cm X 84 cm. They will not be tranquilised but will be well-fed for two to three days before the journey, reports The Indian Express.

There will be three veterinarians from India, Namibia and South Africa on the flight transporting the animals.

All preparations for the inter-country translocation of the cheetahs are complete, said Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav.

Also read: From extinction to reintroduction: A brief history of India’s tryst with the cheetah

What happens after the animals land in Jaipur?

After the flight lands in Jaipur, the cheetahs will be transported to the Kuno-Palpur National Park by helicopter. This ride will take another 40 minutes. A temporary helipad has been constructed at the park.

When asked how many helicopters will be used to transport the cheetahs, JS Chauhan, the principal chief conservator of the forest, said that it would depend on the type of aircraft deployed for the purpose, reports PTI. If a smaller aircraft is deployed, there will be two sorties to shift the felines from Jaipur to Kuno-Palpur, he said.

Over the next five years, Indian plans to reintroduce 50 cheetahs from Africa. Image courtesy: @moefcc/Twitter

Where will the cheetahs be kept in Kuno?

It will be a memorable birthday for the PM. At Kuno, the cheetahs will be released by Modi. For a month, they will be kept in large quarantine enclosures. This will help keep a check on them if they are carrying any disease and help them adapt to the new environment.

"PM Modi will release them (the animals) into quarantine enclosures the same day. We have set up six quarantine enclosures as per the legal mandate required during the shifting of animals from one continent to another,” Chauhan told PTI.

According to the protocols, the cheetahs need to be quarantined for a month before and after shifting from one continent to another, he added.

Once the quarantine is over, they will be released into a bigger enclosure of six square kilometres until they adapt to the new environment.

How long will the cats be in the enclosures?

According to a report in The Indian Express, the animals will be able to hunt in the bigger enclosures. “In this bigger enclosure, where they will have prey and be able to hunt, we will closely monitor not only their health but also how they are adapting to Kuno, hunting, feeding, excreta etc. Once this is found to be satisfactory, they will be released into the 740 sq km Kuno National Park,’’ SP Yadav, member secretary, National Tiger Conservation Authority told the newspaper.

While the national park is 740 sq km, the cheetahs will roam free in a 5,000 sq km area around it.

The cheetahs will be released in enclosures, where they will be quarantined and monitored. Image courtesy: @moefcc/Twiter

So far, 24 of the 25 villages with a population of about 5,000 have been resettled to make way for the cheetahs. Also, feral dogs in the region have been vaccinated to ensure that they do not spread any disease in the spotted animals, the NTCA chief said, adding that locals in the regions have been sensitised about the new guests.

According to Yadav, Kuno has enough prey base to host the cheetahs. “It has a lot of positive factors such as good quality and diversity of habitats, grasslands, bamboo, wet patches. And then there are perennial massive tributaries to the Chambal river and diverse species of prey for the survival of the Cheetahs,” he told Daily Pioneer.

Will more cheetahs be coming to India?

Yes. The government plans to reintroduce 50 cheetahs in India over the next five years. This year, India will get 20. While eight will come from Namibia on Saturday, 12 others will be translocated from South Africa.

The cheetahs from South Africa are all ready to be moved to India. They are vaccinated, radio-collared and an extensive health check-up has been conducted.

In July, India signed a Memorandum of Agreement with Namibia for the re-introduction of the animals. A similar pact will also be signed with South Africa. “The memorandum of agreement with South Africa is also in process. Both Namibia and South Africa have been very cooperative and their technical team is very good. We expect a very successful translocation,” an official, who did not want to be named, told Hindustan Times.

India’s last cheetah died 75 years earlier in 1947 and the species was declared extinct in the country. The Indian government has been attempting to bring back the cheetah since the 1960s. Earlier, the aim was to reintroduce the Asian cheetah which is surviving in Iran. However, Tehran declined because the population of the endangered animal was critically low.

The plans to bring the African cheetah to India gained momentum in September 2009 when Jairam Ramesh was the environment minister. Officials informed that the “African Cheetah Introduction Project in India” was conceived back then.

Now 13 years later, India will get its first batch of cheetahs. It remains to be seen how well they adapt to the country.

With inputs from agencies

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