NEW DELHI: More than 70 years after cheetahs were declared officially extinct in India, the country now has four newborn cheetahs, according to India’s Environment Minister.
Freddie and Siyaya, two of the eight rehabilitated cheetahs brought from Namibia to Kuno National Park of India in the central state of Madhya Pradesh last September as part of a plan of the government to re-home 50 of the big cats in India over the next five years, gave birth to the cubs. Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav described the birth of the cheetahs as a “momentous event in our wildlife conservation history” on Twitter.
PM of India praised the news
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised the announcement as “wonderful news.” The announcement of the baby cheetahs comes just days after one of Namibia’s cheetahs, Sasha, died of kidney disease. Cheetahs were declared extinct in 1952 in India but are now back in one of the country’s national parks. As per a news release from Namibia’s Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF), the group arrived in September and included three male and five female adult cheetahs, including Sasha and Siyaya.
In November last year, the animals were moved from the quarantine enclosure to acclimatization zones before being released into the park. A dozen more cheetahs – seven males and five females – were brought in from South Africa in February, after the country signed an agreement with India to introduce dozens of cheetahs to the country over the next decade. Cheetahs are the only large carnivores that have become extinct in India.
Under British colonial rule, forests across India were cleared to make way for settlements and plantations, resulting in the extinction of big cats such as the cheetah. Cheetahs were frequently used for sport hunting by Indian nobility because they were less dangerous than tigers and relatively easy to tame. According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), spotted felines can now be found in southern and eastern Africa, particularly in Namibia, Botswana, Kenya, and Tanzania.
However, the range of endangered cats used to be much larger. Cheetahs once roamed the Middle East, central India, and much of Sub-Saharan Africa. Populations have been drastically reduced due to habitat loss, poaching, and human conflict. According to the WWF, only about 7,000 cheetahs are left in the wild.
