Modi to reintroduce Cheetahs to India after 6 decades of extinction

Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi will celebrate his birthday by releasing Namibian cheetahs into the wild in central India to bolster his reputation as an environmentalist while saving an animal that colonial hunters and dwindling grasslands drove extinct.

The celebration of Modi's birthdays since he became prime minister in 2014 has grown, giving him another another platform to increase his appeal.

His supporters have sponsored vaccination campaigns throughout the epidemic, exhibited documentaries about his life, and established a smartphone app to let people get in touch with him.

This time around Modi, who turns 72 on Saturday, will release the eight cheetahs flown in from Namibia into a special enclosure in the Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh state. The sedated big cats will then be kept in quarantine for a month, reports Bloomberg.

Cheetahs went extinct two years after Modi was born and their reintroduction in India is the result of decades' worth of work by several governments.

"The reintroduction of cheetah in India is a step towards correcting an ecological wrong," Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav said in a tweet. 

While the cheetahs that went extinct in India are a different subspecies from those found in Africa, their function as top predators within the ecosystems in which they live is likely to be identical, the University of Pretoria, which is assisting with the reintroduction program, has said in a statement. More cheetahs are set to be brought to India in the next five years. 

The mission is not without its risks. 

The African cheetahs will find Indian reserves challenging due to a lack of suitable habitat of sufficient size. They will also face risks from other predators including feral and domestic dogs, said Ravi Chellam, a wildlife biologist and conservation scientist based in the southern city of Bengaluru.

"India currently just does not have sufficient habitats for establishing a free-ranging population of cheetahs," Chellam said. "Introduction of African cheetahs is not a national conservation priority, the risk is not worth taking."

Project Cheetah is a conservation initiative that comes after others aimed at boosting the numbers of critically endangered animals including tigers, lions, and elephants. In these initiatives, Modi has frequently taken center stage. In 2019, he even discussed climate change on television with British explorer Bear Grylls.

In the "service of the nation," Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party celebrated his birthday last year for three weeks. That occurred at a time when his popularity was waning and India's economy was in trouble following a harsh second round of Covid-19.

Despite a choppy second term in office Modi's popularity has recovered. A recent opinion survey showed nearly 53% of respondents continue to favor him as prime minister, Bloomberg reported.

He is looking at a third term in office, with elections due in 2024. 

This year, an e-auction of gifts and souvenirs presented to the prime minister will also begin on his birthday. The proceeds will be spent on a program to rejuvenate the Ganges river, sacred to many of India's devout Hindus, by curbing pollution and improving its fragile ecosystem.