Three years on, India’s cheetah reintroduction struggles with poor science, delays, and missed grassland goals. In September 2022, the arrival of eight cheetahs from Namibia to Kuno National Park was hailed as a conservation milestone. Five months later in February 2024, 12 more spotted cats arrived from South Africa. The initiative, branded Project Cheetah, carried lofty ambitions. It aimed not just to restore the world’s fastest land animal to India’s landscapes, but to revive open natural ecosystems (ONEs) — the grasslands, scrublands, and savannahs that are among the country’s most neglected habitats. By reintroducing a top predator, policymakers hoped to spark wider conservation attention, diversify India’s wildlife portfolio beyond tigers and forests, and make ecological amends for a human-caused extinction. The Cheetah Action Plan set out a clear roadmap: import 5–10 cheetahs annually for a decade, create a metapopulation across multiple states, secure and restore grassland hab...
The dispersing tigers of Bhopal seem to be watching helplessly as their habitat grows smaller, food getting scarcer while a smarter set of predators, the land sharks, increasingly devour their habitat. As you read this, prowling somewhere in the fast-dwindling forests of Kaliasot- Kathotia-Kerwa , on the city outskirts, are 18 magnificent tigers, whose future hangs on the pen tips of Bhopal’s babudom. Pending Tiger Issues Many times, some of these dispersing tigers have left the balding jungle cover and strayed into the National Judicial Academy at Bhadbhada , as if knocking its doors for justice Two tiger issues have been pending for long. After the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) accorded a status of tiger reserve to Ratapani sanctuary , the source population of Bhopal tigers, in 2013, the state ...