New Delhi: An ill-nourished female cheetah was taken care of and brought back to health by farm workers and two brothers who hunt together as a team is among the eight big cats that are being brought from Namibia to reintroduce the species in India. Besides, PM Narendra Modi has decided to release the spotted felines – five females and three males — into the Kuno National Park (KNP) in Madhya Pradesh on his birthday on September 17.

At KNP, Modi will release the cheetahs aged four to six years, into smaller quarantine enclosures where they will be kept for 30 days. Following this, they will be released in a six-sq km predator-proof holding facility with nine compartments.

The Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF), an international not-so-profit organisation headquartered in Namibia are dedicated to saving the cheetah in the wild out of which five female cheetahs are aged between two years and five years, and the male cheetahs are aged between 4.5 years and 5 years.

Male cheetahs

The male cheetahs include two brothers who have been hailing from the CFFs 58,000-hectare private reserve near Otjiwarongo, Namibia, since July 2021, when the CFF staff first noticed their tracks around the Centre. Another male was born at the Erindi Private Game Reserve, a protected wildlife and ecological reserve in central Namibia, in March 2018.

Female cheetahs

The cheetahs include a female who was found with her brother at a waterhole near the city of Gobabis in southeastern Namibia. The big cat has been living in the CCF centre since September 2020.

Moreover, another female cheetah was also trapped on the CCF’s neighbouring farm in July 2022 which is owned by a popular businessman in Namibia.

Another cheetah was born at Erindi Private Game Reserve in April 2020, while the fourth female cheetah was found on a farm near Gobabis, Namibia, in late 2017 by some farm workers.

The CCF staff picked up another female from a farm situated in the north-western part of Namibia close to the village of Kamanjab in February 2019.