Seven decades after extinction, the world’s fastest land animal cheetahs have returned to India.
Eight big cats, five females and three males, from Namibia made the 11-hour journey on September 17 in a chartered cargo flight dubbed “Cat Plane” to the northern Indian city of Gwalior. They stepped out onto the grassland of Kuno National Park spread over a 289-square-mile area in central India.
Officials described the project as the world’s first intercontinental relocation of cheetahs. This is the first time a large carnivore was moved from one continent to another and reintroduced in the wild.
The arrival of the big cats coincides with the 72nd birthday of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who released the first cat into the park on Saturday.
This was the first batch of at least 20 cheetahs coming to India from South Africa and Namibia, home to more than a third of the world’s 7,000 cheetahs.
“Cheetahs play an important role in grassland ecosystems,” herding prey through grasslands and preventing overgrazing, said conservation biologist Laurie Marker, founder of the Cheetah Conservation Fund leading the Namibian side of the project.
Cheetahs were once widespread in India and became extinct in 1952 from hunting and loss of habitat.
The first cheetah in the world to be bred in captivity was in India during the rule of the Mughal emperor Jahangir in the 16th century. His father, Akbar, recorded that there were 10,000 cheetahs during his time from 1556 to 1605.