Twelve cheetahs left South Africa for India last month as part of an initiative to reintroduce the animals to a former range state, following their local extinction due to hunting and loss of habitat in the last century.

The 12 cheetahs joined eight others that were relocated to India’s Kuno National Park from Namibia in September last year.

Earlier this year, the governments of South Africa and India signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Cooperation on the Re-introduction of Cheetah to India. 

The MoU facilitates co-operation between the two countries to establish a viable and secure cheetah population in India to ensure that expertise is shared and exchanged and capacity built to promote cheetah conservation.

This includes human-wildlife conflict resolution, capture and translocation of wildlife and community participation in conservation in the two countries. 

Conservation translocations have become a common practice to conserve species and restore ecosystems. South Africa plays an active role in providing founders for the population and range expansion of iconic species such as cheetahs.

“It is because of South Africa’s successful conservation practices that our country is able to participate in a project such as this – to restore a species in a former range state and thus contribute to the future survival of the species,” said the Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, Barbara Creecy.

Restoring cheetah populations is considered by India to have vital and far-reaching conservation consequences, which would aim to achieve a number of ecological objectives, including re-establishing the function role of cheetah within their historical range in the country and enhancing the livelihood options and economies of the local communities.

Following the import of the 12 cheetahs in February, the plan is to translocate a further 12 annually for the next eight to 10 years. Scientific assessments will be undertaken periodically to inform such translocations.