Login With Google
M.P. seeks revival of cheetah reintroduction project
Why it is in news?
- The Madhya Pradesh forest department has written to the National Tiger Conservation Authority to revive the plan to reintroduce cheetahs in the State’s Nauradehi sanctuary.
- The ambitious project, conceived in 2009, had hit a roadblock for want of funds.
- The country’s last spotted feline died in Chhattisgarh in 1947.
- Later, the cheetah — which is the fastest land animal — was declared extinct in India in 1952.
Money matters
- The M.P. forest department would need finances from the Centre for the project,NTCA a statutory body under the Union Environment Ministry had committed ₹50 crore to the State for it in 2011.
- The Wildlife Institute of India at Dehradun had prepared a ₹260-crore cheetah re-introduction project six years ago.
- It was estimated that an amount of ₹25 crore to ₹30 crore would be needed to build an enclosure in an area of 150 sq km for the cheetahs in Nauradehi.
- The proposal was to put the felines in the enclosure with huge boundary walls before being released in the wild.
- Nauradehi was found to be the most suitable area for the cheetahs as its forests are not very dense to restrict the fast movement of the spotted cat.
- Besides, the prey base for cheetahs is also in abundance at the sanctuary, he added.
- According to the earlier action plan, around 20 cheetahs were to be translocated to Nauradehi from Namibia in Africa.
- The Namibia Cheetah Conservation Fund had then showed its willingness to donate the felines to India.
Source
The Hindu