Kamal Ghorui
NEW DELHI: Amid reports of two cheetahs from Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park (KNP) moving into Rajasthan’s Baran district, National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) Sunday said this movement reinforces the strategic rationale for the proposed 17,000 sqkm Kuno–Gandhi Sagar inter-state wildlife corridor spanning seven districts of Rajasthan and eight of MP.Calling the inter-state movement a success story of India’s Project Cheetah, NTCA said it has been actively coordinating with state forest departments and the cheetahs are under 24×7 GPS and radio-collar monitoring by an inter-state team.Sharing updates on movement of cheetahs KP-2 and KP-3, the authority said KP-2 has been tracked in the Mangrol range of Baran, while KP-3 entered the Banjh Amli Conservation Reserve after travelling 60–70 km from KNP.“Both animals are positioned approximately 6 km apart on either bank of the Parvati river,” it said while noting field teams deployed from Kishanganj and Anta ranges have been tracking them continuously.“Long-distance dispersal across landscape boundaries is a well-documented, natural territorial behaviour in cheetahs. The Project Cheetah Action Plan explicitly anticipates and provides for inter-state movement within the Kuno–Gandhi Sagar metapopulation landscape,” said NTCA in its report to the environment ministry on the cheetahs’ movement.India currently has a thriving population of 48 cheetahs, including 28 India-born cubs. Nine adult cheetahs (six females and three males), received from Botswana, were released into quarantine enclosures at KNP on Feb 28. They were the third batch of cheetahs flown into India.
