Kuno Gears Up To Welcome Fresh Batch of Cheetahs From Botswana

Bhopal: The Kuno National Park (KNP) of Madhya Pradesh is ‘ready’ to welcome the fresh batch of eight cheetahs from Botswana to mark the second phase of India’s ‘Cheetah Reintroduction Project’, the first of its kind experiment in the world.

The eight cheetahs from Botswana, part of India’s Project Cheetah, are currently quarantined at the Mokolodi Nature Reserve near Gaborone, Botswana, a senior forest officer told this newspaper on Sunday.

They were sourced from the Ghanzi region in Botswana.

The symbolic handover of the cheetahs to India was done in the presence of president Draupadi Murmu during her visit to Botswana in November this year.

“We are expecting a fresh batch of eight cheetahs from Botswana at the KNP sometime in January 2026”, Uttam Kumar Sharma, field director of the KNP, told this newspaper.

According to him, the old infrastructure laid in the KNP during the introduction of eight cheetahs from Namibia in September 2022 and subsequently 12 cheetahs from South Africa six months later will be used for settling the cheetahs from Botswana in the national park.

As many as 12 quarantine enclosures were established and nine large enclosures set up to accommodate the 20 cheetahs from Namibia and South Africa at that time.

The same quarantine enclosures and the large enclosures will be used for quarantine and later acclimatization of the cheetahs from Botswana in the KNP after their arrival, Mr. Sharma said.

They will be kept in the quarantine enclosures for a month after their arrival in the KNP and later released in the large enclosures in semi-wild conditions to acclimatize them to the climatic conditions of their new home.

They will be released in the wild in the KNP after finding them fit for the wild condition.

The proposed introduction of the eight cheetahs from Botswana will help create a diverse genetic pool of the species, boosting the goal of the project to produce a meta population of the species, a senior forest officer said.

“Kuno will become the global lab for creating a diverse genetic pool of cheetahs”, the forest officer said.

India now has a total of 30 cheetahs, comprising 11 founder stock and 19 India-born cheetahs.

Of them, Kuno has 27 cheetahs, while Gandhi Sagar wildlife sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh has three adult cheetahs, shifted from Kuno a few months back.

The Madhya Pradesh government has declared Nauradehi wildlife sanctuary which has been renamed as Veerangana Durgavati Tiger Reserve, as the third cheetah habitat in the state.

Madhya Pradesh chief minister Mohan Yadav on Sunday indicated that Nauradehi may get some cheetahs before the monsoon next year.