Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday welcomed the new batch of 12 cheetahs in Kuno National Park.
Earlier on Saturday, Indian Air Force’s Mi-17 helicopters carrying the second batch of 12 Cheetah landed at their destination. Quoting a tweet by Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Bhupender Yadav, the Prime Minister tweeted, “India’s wildlife diversity receives a boost with this development.”
The big cats made their journey in Indian Air Force’s (IAF) C-17 Globemaster cargo plane.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan released the 12 cheetahs in Kuno National Park on Saturday and said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision to conserve the environment is showing a path to the world.
CM said, “Madhya Pradesh has got a gift on Mahashivratri. I thank PM Modi from the bottom of my heart, it is his vision. Twelve Cheetahs will be rehabilitated to Kuno and the total number will become 20. The Cheetahs that had come earlier have now adapted to the situation very well.”
The aircraft after a 10-hour long flight from Johannesburg, South Africa, landed at Air Force Station Gwalior today.
Last year in September, eight cheetahs from Namibia were flown into India.
The cheetahs are being brought to India as part of the Cheetah Reintroduction project on the basis of the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed between the South African and the Indian governments.
The MoU facilitates cooperation between the two countries to establish a viable and secure cheetah population in India; promotes conservation and ensures that expertise is shared and exchanged, and capacity is built, to promote cheetah conservation. This includes human-wildlife conflict resolution, capture and translocation of wildlife and community participation in conservation in the two countries.