INDIA has rejected three cheetahs from Namibia that were moved to India last month.
•
This was after Namibia, which had signed an agreement with India on wildlife conservation and sustainable biodiversity use, agreed to relocate eight cheetahs.
In 1952, India declared the Cheetah extinct.
According to The Times of India Friday, the cheetahs will be moved to India’s Kuno National Park, Madhya Pradesh.
According to The Times of India, India rejected the cheetahs as they were captive-bred and couldn’t hunt.
According to the newspaper’s report, Yadvendradev Vikramsinh Jahala, dean of India’s Wildlife Institute of India was recently in Namibia and found that the three had been replaced by wild-caught leopards.
Romeo Muyunda, spokesperson for the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism, said that the ministry was aware of the three rejected Cheetahs when he was reached out.
“We deny such allegations and claims given by India. The cheetahs do not belong to captive animals. They were captured when they were young and were exposed to hunting,” Muyunda said.
“It is so unfortunate that the three were rejected, but India has interest in the five others. We will not give them cheetahs anymore to replace the three rejected ones, as we do not want to compromise on our cheetah population,” Muyunda said.
The three cheetahs from Namibia will be returned and reintroduced to their natural habitat. However, they will require monitoring.
“As a government, we were not involved in the selection of these cheetahs, they were selected by the Cheetah Conservation Fund of Namibia at Otjiwarongo,” he said.
He said that the fund assured him that the cheetahs had not been taken captive by the ministry.
“The ones we gave apparently cannot hunt for themselves but can only be fed, and they want the ones that can hunt for themselves,” Muyunda said. By Eino vatileni
Source: namibian
