The South African cheetahs coming to India

How a 2010 boom in South African cheetah population could mean 500 new big cats for India...

Transcript

00:00Since 1979, India has looked towards Africa as a source of cheetah for

00:29reintroduction and since 2020 we've been in negotiations with the Indian

00:50government to get South African cheetahs to India.

01:29Before we load the crates we just need to get photographs left and right.

01:39Namibia is making 8 animals available for reintroduction in India and South Africa is

01:43making 12 animals available.

02:01It's a lot better to have a smaller cage than a bigger one or like a crate and that's purely

02:06because it doesn't give them space to try run against the side to get out.

02:15So after they've been woken up they usually use a long-lasting anesthetic which just comes

02:22out of the system quite slowly as opposed to other opioids which you can reverse and

02:28then they'll be completely awake and very stressed.

02:39So what we did today was is we immobilized four cheetahs okay two adult males and two

02:44adult females and we've loaded them into transport crates and they will be traveling to Maramau

02:50in the Zambezi Delta in Mozambique.

02:52So Vincent van der Merwe will be traveling with the cats through the night they will

02:56then hop onto an airplane and travel over into Mozambique early in the morning.

03:26So we're going to send every every year we'll send 8 to 12 animals to top them up to increase

03:55their numbers to bring in new genetics until they have a viable population.