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India and South Africa have lastly signed a long-pending settlement to translocate 12 cheetahs to India, the Environment Ministry stated in a press release on Friday.

The cheetahs will probably be transported to India by February-end and reintroduced on the Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh, the place eight such cats have been introduced from Namibia in September final 12 months underneath an analogous settlement.

The preliminary batch of cheetahs from South Africa will probably be adopted by transport of batches of 12 yearly for the subsequent “eight to 10 years”, the Ministry added.

“A batch of animals has been under quarantine and ready to travel. A team from India will go to South Africa, choose the animals to be brought and accompany them. In India, our enclosures to host the animals are ready,” S.P. Yadav, Director, National Tiger Conservation Authority and a key authorities official concerned with the cheetah translocation mission, informed The Hindu.

“The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Reintroduction of Cheetah to India facilitates cooperation between the parties to establish a viable and secure cheetah population in India; promotes conservation and ensures 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,” the Ministry stated.

“In terms of the MoU, the countries will collaborate and exchange best practices in large carnivore conservation through the transfer of technology, training of professionals in management, policy, and science, and to establish a bilateral custodianship arrangement for cheetah translocated between the two countries,” it added.

The cheetahs from South Africa have been anticipated to reach in India final 12 months however have been delayed as a remaining deal had been held up, The Hindu reported in August.  

In December, the Press Trust of India reported {that a} dozen cheetahs quarantined in South Africa for greater than 4 months “had lost their fitness” of their wait to be flown to the Kuno National Park.

Eight cheetahs, together with 5 females, have been flown from Windhoek, Namibia to Gwalior, adopted by a helicopter experience to the grasslands of Kuno Palpur final September. They have been launched into devoted enclosures by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In the next months, 5 of the cheetahs started looking on their very own and have largely tailored to the native setting. One of the cheetahs, nonetheless, has been nursing a kidney ailment however is recovering, Mr. Yadav stated.

The Namibian cheetahs have been flown in on a industrial plane from Windhoek to Gwalior. The South African cheetahs could also be flown in on an Air Force airplane, an individual aware of the operation, who declined to be recognized, stated. “The process of having them adapt to India will be similar to what was followed for the Namibian animals,” the individual added.