Two six-year-old male cheetahs were moved from Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park to the Gandhi Sagar Wildlife Sanctuary on Sunday, reported The Hindu.

Gandhi Sagar, about 300 km from Kuno, has been earmarked as an important region for the conservation of cheetahs, according to The Indian Express.

As part of Project Cheetah, a conservation effort that began in 2022, officials aim to establish a metapopulation of 60 to 70 cheetahs across both facilities.

A metapopulation is a group of local populations of the same species that are interconnected through occasional migration or dispersal. The metapopulation as a whole can survive even if individual local populations go extinct, since those habitat patches can be repopulated by individuals from other patches.

Releasing the two cheetahs – Prabhas and Pawak – in Gandhi Sagar, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav said the move was aimed at increasing the number of cheetahs in India.

“Encouragingly, the project is achieving success,” Yadav was quoted as saying by The Hindu. “Gandhi Sagar Sanctuary has become the second site in the state, after Kuno National Park, where cheetahs are being reintroduced.”

The cheetah was officially declared extinct by the Indian government in 1952. Seven decades later, eight Namibian cheetahs – five females and three males – were released in Kuno National Park on September 17, 2022, marking the first-ever intercontinental translocation of the big cats.

Ten cheetahs have died in Kuno.

With Prabhas and Pawak’s relocation, the national park hosts 24 cheetahs, including 14 in the open forest and 10 in enclosures. Fourteen of them are cubs born in India.

The move to relocate them came a day after PTI reported that eight cheetahs will be brought to India from Botswana in southern Africa in two phases, with the first four expected to arrive by May.

The news agency quoted a press release from the Madhya Pradesh government as saying that an agreement between India and Kenya was also being developed.

Over Rs 112 crore has been spent on Project Cheetah so far, officials of the National Tiger Conservation Authority reportedly said during a review meeting, according to PTI.

The National Tiger Conservation Authority operates under the Union environment ministry. It is tasked with the protection of endangered animals and the implementation of Project Cheetah.

The press release also said the cheetahs would be relocated in a phased manner to Gandhi Sagar Sanctuary. “The sanctuary is adjacent to the border of Rajasthan, so an in-principle agreement has been reached between Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan to establish an inter-state cheetah conservation area,” it added.

Also read: The dark clouds over India’s cheetah project