MP’s Tiger Reserve May Be 3rd Home For Cheetah
NTCA team visits Nauradehi sanctuary for inspection
Bhopal: Nauradehi wildlife sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh may be the third home for cheetahs in Madhya Pradesh.
A team of officials from the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) is currently camping in the reserve forest to oversee preparations for developing particular sites in it as suitable cheetah habitat, a senior forest officer told this newspaper here on Thursday.
“The NTCA team has been camping in the reserve forest since last month to explore the forest ranges in the wildlife sanctuary suitable for cheetah habitat and develop them for introduction of cheetah”, the forest officer said, unwilling to be quoted.
Nauradehi wildlife sanctuary was merged with Durgavati wildlife sanctuary for creating the Veerangana Durgavati Tiger Reserve recently.
Three forest ranges in the tiger reserve, Mohali, Jhappa, and Singpur, are proposed to be developed as cheetah habitat for introduction of cheetahs there in the near future, the forest officer said.
“Preliminary works for developing the three forest ranges as cheetah habitat have started but introduction of cheetahs in Nauradehi is still too far”, the officer said.
But it has already been decided by the Centre that Nauradehi will be the third home for cheetahs, he added.
The two wildlife sanctuaries in Madhya Pradesh, Kuno in Sheopur district and Gandhi Sagar in Mandsaur district, are currently homes to cheetahs in India.
Under India’s ambitious cheetah reintroduction project, eight cheetahs were translocated from Namibia to Kuno National Park in September 2022 in the first ever intercontinental translocation of carnivores.
Six months later in February 2023, 12 more cheetahs were relocated from South Africa to Kuno National Park.
The subsequent death and proliferation of cheetahs in the park over the period has now brought the cheetah population in Kuno to 31, including 12 adults and 19 cubs.
Two male cheetahs have been relocated to Gandhi Sagar wildlife sanctuary from Kuno National Park recently, turning Gandhi Sagar the second home for cheetahs.
More cheetahs are going to be relocated to Gandhi Sagar from Kuno in coming days, sources said.
