Four cheetah cubs born in India 70 years after extinction – Corriere.it

The prime minister Narendra Modi he called it one wonderful news. And his emotion was shared by thousands of people: in recent days, in fact, the birth of four cheetah cubs (Acinonyx jubatus) inside the
Kuno National Park — a nature reserve located 320 kilometers from New Delhi —. The Ministry of the Environment, Forests and Climate Change posted a video on Twitter showing the puppies, still with their eyes closed, curled up on each other. The mother, Siya, one of eight felines moved to the country from Namibia
last September, on the occasion of the premier’s 72nd birthday, thus initiating a great experiment that has never happened before: reintroducing cheetahs to a place from which they had been hunted to extinction. A few days ago, in the same park, — instead — dead Sashaanother female of the group arrived from Africa, struck down by kidney problems
from which he suffered, most likely, before the trip.

Congratulations ??

A momentous event in our wildlife conservation history during Amrit Kaal!

I am delighted to share that four cubs have been born to one of the cheetahs translocated to India on 17th September 2022, under the visionary leadership of PM Shri @narendramodi ji. pic.twitter.com/a1YXqi7kTt

— Bhupender Yadav (@byadavbjp) March 29, 2023

To this day they remain less than eight thousand specimens in the wild according to the WWF. The Delhi government launched the initiative in 2022 Project cheetah — described here on New York Times
— to bring back cheetahs, originally from Asia, but which have disappeared in India since 1952. In this first phase, eight cheetahs were reintroduced from Namibia in September 2022, while another twelve South African specimens were reintroduced in February 2023. According to estimates it should arrive at reintroduction of 50 specimens in five years.
Write again times that the cheetah species dates back to about 8.5 million years ago, and the animals were once found in large numbers in Africa, Arabia and Asia. Now they live exclusively in Africa, apart from a small population in Iran. Namibia’s cheetahs, five females and three males aged between 2 and 5 years, were selected for their hunting skills, familiarity with humans and genetic profiles, he explained to the times Laurie Marker, American zoologist and executive director of the Cheetah Conservation Fund, main partner of the project. After a month of quarantine, the cheetahs were released in Kuno, a park chosen for its similarity in climate, rainfall and habitat to private reserves in southern Africa. And for the presence of prey, including deer, wild boar and antelope. The disappearance of the cheetah in India mainly attributed to hunters who resell the precious spotted fur, but also to the loss of its habitat.