Project Cheetah Flew 20 Cheetahs From Namibia and South Africa to Kuno in 2022 and 2023, and the Environment Ministry Counted 53 in India by March 2026, 33 of Them Born in the Country

India had 53 cheetahs on 9 March 2026, 33 of them born in the country, the Environment Ministry said that day. The species was declared extinct in India in 1952, and the first eight animals of today’s population were released at Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh on 17 September 2022. The Press Information Bureau (PIB) called Project Cheetah the world’s first inter-continental large wild carnivore translocation project.

The founders were 20 animals, eight from Namibia and twelve from South Africa. Press reports of the four-year status review put the count at 52 on 17 September 2026, 32 of them Indian-born. This piece follows how the plan was made, what the courts decided, and what the official numbers say.

Three cheetahs shot in Koriya

The Action Plan for Introduction of Cheetah in India, written by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the Madhya Pradesh Forest Department, says the last wild cheetahs on record were three shot in the sal forests of Koriya district, now in Chhattisgarh. The plan’s history chapter dates the shooting to 1948 and its appendix to 1947. PIB uses 1947.

The plan names the causes as large-scale capture for coursing (hunting with trained cheetahs), bounties and sport hunting, plus the conversion of habitat and the loss of prey. It says the first wildlife board meeting of independent India, in 1952, called for special priority for the cheetah in central India. PIB says the species was declared extinct that year. The Wild Life (Protection) Act of 1972 outlawed hunting, which the plan treats as removing the original cause of the extinction.

Talks on a return began in earnest at a workshop held at Gajner in Rajasthan on 9 and 10 September 2009. WII and the Wildlife Trust of India then surveyed ten sites in five states between 2010 and 2012. Kuno National Park rated high, the plan says, for its habitat and prey, and because money had already gone into it for Asiatic lions.

The plan describes Kuno as 748 square km with no human settlements, part of a 6,800 square km dry forest landscape across Sheopur and Shivpuri. PIB’s December 2025 backgrounder says 24 villages (1,545 families) were relocated from the park, which left about 6,258 hectares of undisturbed grassland.

The plan also names the grassland species that stand to gain from protected open habitat, among them the lesser florican and the great Indian bustard.

What the Supreme Court decided in 2013 and 2020

On 15 April 2013 the Supreme Court quashed the environment ministry’s earlier order to bring African cheetahs to Kuno. The judgment said the ministry had made no detailed study and had not consulted the National Board for Wildlife, and it put the Gir lions’ second home first. The judgment is covered in our piece on the Gir lions.

On 28 January 2020 a bench of the Chief Justice and Justices B. R. Gavai and Surya Kant took up an NTCA application to bring cheetahs from Africa. The order says the animals would be introduced on an experimental basis in a carefully chosen habitat, and that the site would change if difficulties appeared. It set up an expert committee of Dr M. K. Ranjit Sinh, Dr Dhananjai Mohan and the Deputy Inspector General (Wildlife) of the environment ministry, to guide the NTCA and supervise the process, and told the committee to report every four months.

The order also records the court’s view that “re-introduce” was the wrong word, because African cheetahs never lived in India. The action plan frames the matter differently. It says the Asiatic cheetah (subspecies venaticus) was the animal lost, that Iran’s remnant population of about 30 could not be tapped without harm, and that experts at Gajner chose the African cheetah on the genetic similarity between the two.

Eight from Namibia, twelve from South Africa

India signed a memorandum of understanding with Namibia on 20 July 2022 and one with South Africa in January 2023, PIB records. Eight cheetahs, five female and three male, came from Namibia and were released by the Prime Minister at two release points in Kuno on 17 September 2022. Twelve more, seven male and five female, were flown from South Africa on 18 February 2023 and went on to Kuno. PIB’s backgrounder says the flights used Indian Air Force C-17 aircraft.

PIB’s backgrounder puts the flight distance at more than 7,900 km. Its first-anniversary release of 17 September 2023 says all 20 reached Kuno without a death in transit.

Following a call in the Prime Minister’s Mann Ki Baat radio address, the ministry received 11,565 entries in a naming contest. The Namibian female Siyaya became Jwala and Elton and Freddy became Gaurav and Shaurya, PIB’s list of 20 April 2023 shows. The backgrounder says more than 450 “Cheetah Mitras” (cheetah friends, local volunteers) work in 80 villages around Kuno, and that 80 locals work as trackers and 200 as patrol workers.

Cubs on Indian soil, then a second generation

Jwala gave birth in March 2023, the first litter on Indian soil in about 75 years, PIB’s first-anniversary release says. The NTCA’s annual report records four cubs, of which one survived. PIB calls Mukhi the first cheetah cub born on Indian soil, and in November 2025, at 33 months old, she had five cubs of her own. The ministry described it as the first instance in recent history of an Indian-born cheetah reproducing.

Aasha had three cubs in January 2024, and Jwala four in the same month. Gamini had six in March 2024, the NTCA says, of which four survived. On 18 February 2026 the ministry announced Gamini’s second litter, the ninth successful litter on Indian soil, and put the surviving Indian-born cubs at 27 and the national total at 38. That release gave the litter as three cubs. The 9 March release gives it as four.

On 9 March 2026 Jwala, by then a third-time mother, had five cubs. The ministry counted that as the tenth successful litter, 33 thriving Indian-born cubs and a national total of 53.

What the plan measured, and what the annual report recorded

The action plan listed short-term success criteria: 50 percent survival of the introduced cheetahs in the first year, home ranges established in Kuno, reproduction in the wild, some wild-born cubs surviving past a year, a first generation that breeds, and cheetah revenue reaching local communities. PIB’s release of September 2023 said four of the six criteria had been met, those on survival, home ranges, births and community revenue. It also said that by then no cheetah had died of poaching, snaring, poisoning or retaliatory killing.

The NTCA’s annual report for 2023 to 2024 gives the deaths. Of the 20 imported cheetahs, eight (40 percent) died in two years, in the enclosures or in free-ranging conditions. Of 17 cubs born in India, five (29 percent) died. The report lists the cause event by event, among them kidney failure, aggression between cheetahs, dehydration and heat stroke in young cubs, and blood poisoning after tick infestation and scratch wounds. It says every animal that died was examined by necropsy under NTCA guidelines, with samples sent to a veterinary university laboratory in Jabalpur.

All the free-ranging cheetahs were captured in July and August 2023 for treatment and housed in quarantine enclosures, the report says, and were then moved to soft-release enclosures. On 20 July 2023 a bench led by Justice Gavai asked the Centre why the deaths were “becoming a prestige issue”, Scroll reported, and repeated a suggestion to move some cheetahs to a Rajasthan sanctuary. Scroll also reported that the Additional Solicitor General told the court the Centre had expected that half the animals brought from Africa would not survive.

PIB’s backgrounder says the project tracks the animals with GPS collars and camera traps and measures prey along transect lines of 734 to 816 km, the same camera-trap approach described in our piece on how India counts its tigers. It counted 30 cheetahs in December 2025, of which 11 were founder animals and 19 were Indian-born. By tuput’s subtraction, nine of the 20 founders had died by then.

Gandhi Sagar and the Botswana cheetahs

The plan calls for several sites rather than Kuno alone, a metapopulation (a set of linked groups) at three to five reserves. Gandhi Sagar Wildlife Sanctuary, about 300 km from Kuno, is the second. The NTCA report describes about 28 km of predator-proof fencing around roughly 64 square km for first releases. On 20 April 2025 Madhya Pradesh’s Chief Minister released two male South African cheetahs, Prabhash and Pavak, there, PTI reported.

On 13 November 2025 the Presidents of India and Botswana watched cheetahs from Botswana’s Ghanzi region enter a quarantine facility at Mokolodi Nature Reserve, which PIB called a symbolic donation of eight cheetahs. On 28 February 2026, the ministry’s release of 9 March says, nine cheetahs from Botswana, six female and three male, were released into quarantine enclosures at Kuno. The release gives no reason for the difference between eight and nine.

The count at four years

The Week and the Free Press Journal, reporting the four-year status review in September 2026, give 52 cheetahs, 32 of them Indian-born, with 49 at Kuno and three at Gandhi Sagar. Three of the eight Namibian animals are alive, with 22 Indian-born offspring. Eight of the twelve South African animals are alive, with 10 Indian-born offspring. The nine Botswana animals complete the 52. The Free Press Journal also reports that 23 cheetahs, adults and cubs, have died at Kuno since the project began. The press reports do not name the body that released the review, and we did not find a PIB release of it.

The targets are stated two ways. PIB’s backgrounder describes a goal of 60 to 70 cheetahs across 17,000 square km in the Kuno and Gandhi Sagar landscape and says the project is on track for 2032. The NTCA’s annual report puts the same metapopulation within 25 years. The action plan estimated that Kuno’s prey could sustain 21 cheetahs and the wider landscape 36, and the annual report says more prey is needed to sustain the park’s leopards and cheetahs.