A project to ship cheetahs from Africa to India has been stopped by the country’s Court after an expert branded the move “misconceived.”
India’s environment minister had supported the £35m plan to move the African cheetahs from Namibia to a wildlife sanctuary in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
However, a court adviser said that while cheetahs may have been common in India, the African cats were completely different in both characteristics and genetics.
Jairam Ramesh, the Indian Environmental Minister, told reporters in India that reintroducing cheetahs to their homeland was something to take pride in.
“It is a matter of deep regret that cheetah have become extinct in India because the word ‘cheetah’ comes from Sanskrit. It comes from the Sanskrit word ‘chitrakam’, which means spots,” he said.
“The only mammal to become extinct in India in last 1,000 years is the cheetah.”
Cheetahs were once a common sight all over the Indian subcontinent and some were tamed in order to hunt gazelle and bushstock for Indian royalty.
They were eventually wiped out of India by the 1950s because British colonial officers often hunted them.
