PTI | Gaborone (Botswana)
India and Botswana on Wednesday formally announced to translocate eight Cheetahs from the African nation during the state visit of President Droupadi Murmu.
Thanking her counterpart President Duma Gideon Boko and the people of one of the world’s largest diamond producer countries for the gesture, President Murmu assured that India will take good care of them (Cheetahs).
Botswana will symbolically hand over the big cats to Murmu on Thursday.
The two heads of state will preside over an event where five of the eight captured Cheetahs will be released into a quarantine facility at the Mokolodi nature reserve, marking the symbolic handing over of the hunting cats to India by Botswana as part of Project Cheetah and under a mutual initiative for wildlife conservation.
The Cheetahs have been brought to the nature reserve, 10 km south of Gaborone, from the Ghanzi town located in the Kalahari desert. The rest of the Cheetahs will join the quarantine center soon, Boko said.
Botswana is a landlocked nation whose 70 per cent landmass is covered by the Kalahari desert.
The eight Cheetahs are expected to reach India in a few months time after undertaking quarantine procedures.
“It gives me special pleasure to note that Botswana is to reintroduce Cheetahs into India under Project Cheetah, which is a unique wildlife conservation initiative of the government of India,” Murmu said.
“I am thankful to the President and people of Botswana for sending their Cheetahs to India. We will take good care of them,” she said during a press briefing held at the President’s office here.
Murmu arrived for a three-day state visit to the country on Tuesday. This is the first visit by an Indian President to the country located in southern Africa.
President Boko added that, as part of a biodiversity cooperation, the move to donate the Cheetahs will work to assist regeneration of the population of the big cat in India.
The Botswana president said he was informed that among the Cheetahs was one who was named Duma, like his name, quipping that this was a name for speed, agility and ability to pounce when required.
“We hope that where they are named Duma, you will give the name, where they are not, you will give your name…,” he said, leaving the audience in smiles.
The two leaders were addressing the media after the delegation level talks between the two sides.
On September 17, 2022, Prime Minister Narendra Modi released eight cheetahs brought from Namibia into a special enclosure at Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh, marking the world’s first intercontinental relocation of a large wild carnivore species.
India later imported 12 more cheetahs from South Africa in February 2023.
