4 Cubs make momentous arrival at Zoo: Cheetah from Namibia

Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav announced on Wednesday that one of the cheetahs relocated to India from Namibia, Siyaya, had four babies. In addition to the picture of the cubs, he also posted a video of them making some tiny roars on Twitter. In the history of animal protection in India, he described it as a “momentous occurrence.” The government’s ambitious attempt to restore the spotted felines in India included bringing the cheetahs to Kuno in Madhya Pradesh from Namibia in September of last year.

‘I am glad to inform that four cubs have been born to one of the cheetahs translocated to India on September 17, 2022, under the visionary leadership of PM Shri @narendramodi ji (sic),’ Mr. Yadav wrote in his tweet.

He also expressed his gratitude to the entire Project Cheetah team for their tenacious efforts to restore the big carnivore to India and to right an earlier ecological wrong.

Since the large cats were proclaimed extinct in 1952, these are the first cheetah cubs to be born in India in more than 70 years.

On September 17, 2016, the day before his 72nd birthday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi released the first group of eight cheetahs—five females and three males—into a quarantine cage near Kuno in Madhya Pradesh. According to Madhya Pradesh’s forest and wildlife officials, Sasha, one of the Namibian cheetahs, passed away on Monday as a result of kidney-related complications.

On February 18, 12 cheetahs were flown in from South Africa and released into Kuno as part of a second similar translocation.

Due to overhunting and habitat destruction, the cheetah is the only big carnivore that was entirely eradicated from India.

In 1947, the last cheetah perished in the Koriya district of modern-day Chhattisgarh, and in 1952 the species was officially deemed extinct.

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