Cheetahs moving from Kuno to Rajasthan showing ‘natural territorial behaviour’: NTCA, Pg10

Key Highlights:

• NTCA reported cheetahs moving from Kuno National Park to Rajasthan's Baran district exhibit natural territorial behavior.
• Cheetahs KP2 and KP3, born in India to translocated African cheetahs, traveled 60-70 km to Rajasthan.
• Nine cheetahs from Botswana arrived on February 28 as part of Project Cheetah.
• Since 2022, 29 adult cheetahs have been translocated from Africa, with 9 deaths and 28 cubs born in India.

Detailed Insights:

• The cheetahs are being tracked via satellite and radio-collared, monitored by a joint inter-State team from Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.
• Project Cheetah Action Plan anticipates inter-State movement within the Kuno-Gandhi Sagar metapopulation landscape.
• The movement reinforces the rationale for the proposed 17,000-sq. km Kuno-Gandhi Sagar inter-State wildlife corridor.
• Botswana is the third African country to send cheetahs to India, after Namibia and South Africa, since September 2022.
• Three adult cheetahs are currently housed in the Gandhi Sagar Wildlife Sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh.

Key Concepts Involved:

• NTCA (National Tiger Conservation Authority): A statutory body under the Union Environment Ministry responsible for tiger conservation.
• Project Cheetah: An initiative to reintroduce cheetahs to India after they were declared extinct in 1952.
• Metapopulation: A group of spatially separated populations of the same species that interact at some level.

Project Cheetah