Gujarat hunts for mate for tiger who wandered into Dahod from Madhya Pradesh in February<\/a><\/p>\nEarlier in September, when Mukhi reached adulthood, Minister Yadav had shared her story on X, calling her a \u201csymbol of hope and courage\u201d after she survived being abandoned by her mother, lost her siblings and dealt with health issues.<\/p>\n
Sharma told ThePrint that Mukhi, after being reared by the forest department, was released into the wild a few times.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was during one of the re-wilding attempts that she became pregnant\u2026 The male cheetah could be one of the cubs of Asha, one of the original batch of big cats brought from Namibia,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mukhi was brought back to a boma for her pregnancy. \u201cSo, the birth happened inside. This will ensure she and her cubs are safe in this period,\u201d Sharma said.<\/p>\n
The birth of Mukhi\u2019s cubs takes the number of cheetahs in India to 32 \u2013 29 in Kuno and 3 at Gandhi Sagar National Park, also in MP.<\/p>\n
Project Cheetah, the central government\u2019s plan to reintroduce cheetahs into the wild in India, began in 2022 with the arrival of eight Namibian cheetahs to Kuno. Twelve more big cats were brought from South Africa in February 2023.<\/p>\n
Of these 20, nine adults died over the months. Ten cubs born in India, including Mukhi\u2019s siblings, couldn\u2019t survive.<\/p>\n
The last time India had cheetahs was in 1952, after which they were declared extinct in the country. Project Cheetah was launched as an attempt to revive this population and ensure that the five big cat species \u2013 lion, tiger, cheetah, leopard and snow leopard \u2013 all thrived in the country.<\/p>\n
The next phase of the project will involve bringing a third batch of eight cheetahs, this time from Botswana, to India by December.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, experts expressed concerns about Project Cheetah.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the births that have happened on Indian soil have been in captivity. How will they adjust to the wild if they are born and raised in these enclosures? This continued captive breeding makes no sense for the long-term goals of the project,\u201d said wildlife biologist Ravi Chellam.<\/p>\n
He explained that cheetahs being born in India does not change their genetic make-up. They are African cheetahs, genetically different from Asian cheetahs, which is what India originally had,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Cheetahs, or acinonyx jubatus, are listed as \u2018vulnerable\u2019 species in the International Union for Conservation of Nature\u2019s Red List. There are an estimated 6,000 of these big cats left in the wild worldwide. They are mainly found in the African savannahs and West Asian countries such as Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. And, now, also in India.<\/p>\n
(Edited by Prerna Madan)<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Also Read: Tiger safaris only in \u2018non-forest land\u2019 or \u2018degraded forest land\u2019, not in core habitats, says SC<\/a><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Delhi: Mukhi, now two-and-a-half years old, survived despite the odds. The first cheetah to be born on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304117,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[106553,76178,76180,109978,79,201],"class_list":["post-304116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-cheetah","tag-cheetah-cubs","tag-kuno-national-park","tag-project-cheetah","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}