Yearsold plan to get African cheetahs finally dead

An ambitious, if woolly headed, scheme to introduce cheetahs from Africa to India to compensate for the extinction of a different sub-species of the big cat in India at least 50 years ago, may finally be dead with a Supreme Court appointed panel advising against it.

Amicus in the case ADN Rao submitted the report prepared by the Central Empowered Committee last week, based on peer reviewed papers on cheetahs by Kelly Marnewick of South Africa, LL Marker of Namibia and International Union for Conservation

of Nature (IUCN), and said India does not have “required habitat and prey density” to support cheetahs, accusing a government-run research institute of “incorrectly compressing” data to get the approval of the apex

court to seek the reintroduction of the big cat from Africa.

In 2010, the central government set up an expert panel for reintroducing the cheetah in India. This panel recommended that the home of the fastest animal in the world could be Kuno Palpur in Madhya Pradesh, Velavadar National Park in Gujarat and Tal Chapar sanctuary in Rajasthan. Kuno Palpur was also the place prepared by MP to house Asiatic lions from Gujarat, till the latter refused to share its pride.

Wildlife activists filed a petition in the Supreme Court against the plan to reintroduce cheetahs into India. The court asked Rao to get the issue examined by experts. Before the panel could submit its report, the Madhya Pradesh government sought permission of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) to translocate cheetahs from Africa last month.

NEWDELHI: