Two cheetahs released into third Madhya Pradesh habitat

Two cheetahs have been released into a tiger reserve in Bundelkhand, marking the expansion of the big cat's presence across Madhya Pradesh's protected areas. The release represents a significant milestone in India's cheetah reintroduction programme, which seeks to restore the species to habitats where it was declared extinct in the 1950s.

The Bundelkhand reserve joins Kuno National Park in Sheopur and Gandhi Sagar Wildlife Sanctuary in Mandsaur as designated cheetah habitats within the state. Kuno, which received India's first reintroduced cheetahs in 2022 through a translocation programme with South Africa and Namibia, has been the primary focus of the initiative.

The expansion to multiple sites is intended to distribute the cheetah population across suitable terrain and reduce risks associated with concentrating the reintroduced animals in a single location. Wildlife officials have selected reserves based on prey availability, habitat suitability, and management capacity.

Madhya Pradesh's landscape, characterised by forests and grasslands, provides terrain comparable to cheetah habitats elsewhere on the Indian subcontinent. The reintroduction effort forms part of a broader conservation strategy to restore ecological balance and establish sustainable populations of the species across its historical range.