Madhya Pradesh park gears up to welcome cheetahs

Bhopal, July 17: Madhya Pradesh is gearing up to welcome African cheetahs, which are being brought under an intercontinental translocation project and if everything goes as per plan, the majestic beasts will be here as early as next month.

"We are working on it. Cheetahs will come to Madhya Pradesh in August," the forest department's principal secretary Ashok Barnwal told PTI.

When specifically asked if the big cats, which can sprint at speeds of 80 to 130 km per hour, will arrive in the park on August 15, he said "It can happen."

Asked whether the world's fastest mammals will be brought from Namibia or South Africa, Barnwal said, "Initially from South Africa." On the status of memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with these two countries on translocation of cheetahs, the top forest official said they are yet to be finalised.

An MoU will be signed with South Africa soon, Barnwal said without elaborating further.

India is going to be home once again to the majestic presence of cheetah, the world's fastest land animal.

The fastest land animal in the world declared extinct in the country in 1952, will find a new home in the Kuno-Palpur National Park (KNP) in Sheopur district probably at a time when India will be celebrating its 75th Independence Day.

Cheetahs live in open plains; their habitat is predominantly where their preys live - grasslands, scrubs and open forest systems, semi-arid environments and temperatures that tend to be hotter compared to cooler regimes.

In saving cheetahs, one would have to save not only its prey-base comprising certain threatened species, but also other endangered species of the grasslands and open forest ecosystems, some of which are on the brink of extinction. It is also observed that among large carnivores, conflict with human interests is lowest for Cheetahs. They are not a threat to humans and do not attack large livestock either.

India will source cheetahs from Southern Africa, which can provide India with substantial numbers of suitable cheetah for several years.

Cheetahs from Southern Africa have the maximum observed genetic diversity among extant cheetah lineages, an important attribute for a founding population stock. Moreover, the Southern African cheetahs are found to be ancestral to all the other cheetah lineages including those found in Iran.

Hence, this should therefore be ideal (for reasons stated above) for India's reintroduction programme.