The task force formed to monitor the cheetahs in Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh met on Monday to decide on shifting the big cats brought in from Nambia in southern Africa exactly a month ago into their acclimatisation enclosure but could not reach a decision, an official said.
Eight cheetahs were reintroduced into KNP on September 17 in a function by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, heralding the return of the big cat into the country 70 years after going extinct.
”The task force will now meet at 11:30am on October 21 to once again take a call on shifting the cheetahs from their quarantine bomas (animal enclosure, the term mostly used in eastern and southern Africa) to the acclimatisation enclosure,” a person who attended Monday’s meeting said.
”Monday’s meeting was attended by seven out of nine members. Madhya Pradesh State Wildlife Board member Abhilash Khandekar and Wildlife Institute of India scientist Dr Vishnu Priya did not attend,” he said, adding that the task force would ”quite likely” meet again online.
The nine-member task force was set up on September 20 to monitor the introduction of cheetahs in KNP and other designated areas by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change.
The eight cheetahs comprise five females and three males in the 30-66 month age group and are named Freddy, Alton, Savannah, Sasha, Obaan, Asha, Cibili, and Saisa.
They are currently housed in six ‘bomas’, two of which are 50 metres into 30 metres, and four are 25 square metres in area, and are being reared on a diet of buffalo meat, officials said.
Incidentally, in his speech during the reintroduction event, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said the cheetahs need to be given some time to make Kuno National Park their home before visitors can be allowed to see them.
The last cheetah died in India in Koriya district in present day Chhattisgarh in 1947, and the species was declared extinct in 1952.
The ambitious ‘African Cheetah Introduction Project in India’ was conceived in 2009. culminating in eight cheetahs being brought to KNP in north MP on September 17 this year.
