They were hunted into extinction in the country more than 60 years ago, but now cheetahs are being reintroduced to three parts of India in an attempt to bring them back from the brink.
The Indian government has approved a $650,000 (30 million rupees) plan to create sanctuaries in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan in the first year alone, reports UK’s Daily Telegraph.
Six cheetahs from Africa and Iran will be introduced to each three sites (18 total) with hopes that their population will expand to around 50 within a decade.
Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh said the reintroduction of the world’s fastest land animal would “restore the grasslands” of India.
“The return of the cheetah would make India the only country in the world to host six of the world’s eight large cats and the only one to have all the large cats of Asia,” MK Ranjitsinh of Wildlife Trust of India told the Press Trust of India news agency.
But the herds of deer and antelopes that once sustained the cheetahs are long gone leading many experts to predict that the project will fail, according to the Guardian.
India’s last wild cheetahs are thought to have been shot by the Maharajah of Surguja in 1947.
Photo by James Temple via Wikimedia Commons.