Two of the eight cheetahs inside the Kuno National Park (KNP) in Madhya Pradesh were on Saturday released into an acclimatization enclosure from the quarantine area where they were kept since their translocation from Namibia in mid-September, an official said.
“Two cheetahs were released in the larger enclosure from the quarantine zones on Saturday. The remaining six cheetahs will also be released in the (acclimatization enclosure) in a phased manner,” KNP Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) Prakash Kumar Verma said. He said the two cheetahs were not released in an enclosure where a leopard was traced earlier. The cheetahs, released in a bigger zone on Saturday, were together in the quarantine enclosure, the DFO added.
The larger enclosure is an area of more than five square km, officials had earlier said. Eventually, the eight cheetahs will be released into the wild as per plans. The eight cheetahs– five females and three males in the 30–66-month age group– were released in the dedicated quarantine zones at KNP on September 17 at a function by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, heralding the return of the big cats to India 70 years after they were declared extinct in the country.
As per initial plans, the cheetahs– named Freddy, Alton, Savannah, Sasha, Obaan, Asha, Cibili and Saisa– were to be kept in quarantine for a month.
According to international norms, wild animals must be kept in quarantine for a month to check the spread of any infection before and after their translocation to another country.
Since their release on September 17, the eight cheetahs were housed in six 'bomas' (enclosures).
They were provided buffalo meat, the officials had said. The last cheetah died in India in Koriya district in present-day Chhattisgarh in 1947, and the species was declared extinct in 1952.
