UPSC Darpan

Environment & EcologyGS321 September 2026

Botswana Cheetah CCB-2 Released at Gandhi Sagar as Kuno Births Take India's Count to 56

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The news

BHOPAL. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav on Sunday, 20 September, released CCB-2, a female cheetah brought to India from Botswana, into Gandhi Sagar, The Indian Express reported. CCB-2, around three years old, was relocated from Kuno National Park in the Gwalior-Chambal region of the State. With her arrival Gandhi Sagar now has four cheetahs, two males and two females. Wildlife officials hope CCB-2 will help start a new family of cheetahs, since the existing female at the site has so far failed to mate with the two males there. Gandhi Sagar, spread across the Mandsaur-Neemuch region along the Madhya Pradesh-Rajasthan border, became the country's second cheetah habitat when two male cheetahs, Pawak and Prabhas, were moved there from Kuno in April 2025. The paper refers to the site both as a national park and as a wildlife sanctuary. Speaking after the release, Mr. Yadav said the relocation was part of the State's continuing efforts to strengthen cheetah conservation under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Project Cheetah, the programme to bring back to India a large cat that had become extinct in the country. He described the programme as significant not only for Madhya Pradesh but for Asia, pointing out that the cheetah had disappeared from the Asian landscape and had also become extinct in India. “It is a matter of good fortune for us that cheetahs are once again roaming freely on the soil of Madhya Pradesh,” he said, according to the State government's statement, adding that the return of the species reflected the State's ethos of ‘live and let live’. The release came two days after a significant moment for the project: on 18 September an India-born female cheetah, KGP12, gave birth to four cubs at Kuno. The birth was notable because KGP12 was herself born in India to a cheetah brought from South Africa, which makes her cubs part of a second generation born on Indian soil. The latest births took India's total cheetah population to 56, according to reports citing forest officials and the Union Environment Ministry. Syllabus link: species reintroduction, protected-area management and biodiversity conservation, GS3.

The chain in one line: Cheetah hunted to extinction in India by the mid-twentieth century → Project Cheetah imports African cheetahs to Kuno from 2022 → Kuno's space and prey limits force a second site → males moved to Gandhi Sagar in April 2025 → a Botswana female is added as Kuno records second-generation births and a count of 56

Static syllabus linkage

  1. The cheetah is the only large mammal India lost after Independence. The cheetah was declared extinct in India in 1952, having been hunted and captured for coursing and having lost its grassland habitat. The Asiatic subspecies survives only in Iran and is critically endangered, which is why India turned to African cheetahs. The species as a whole is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List and is protected in India under Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.
  2. Project Cheetah began at Kuno in September 2022. Under the Action Plan for Introduction of Cheetah in India, eight cheetahs from Namibia were released into Kuno National Park in Sheopur district of Madhya Pradesh on 17 September 2022, followed by twelve from South Africa in February 2023. The project is implemented by the National Tiger Conservation Authority with the Wildlife Institute of India and the State forest department. Kuno was upgraded from a wildlife sanctuary to a national park in 2018.
  3. The NTCA is a statutory body. The National Tiger Conservation Authority was constituted under Section 38L of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, inserted by the 2006 amendment, and is chaired by the Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change. Its handling of Project Cheetah, although the cheetah is not a tiger, reflects its role as India's principal big-cat management agency.
  4. Gandhi Sagar sits on the Chambal. Gandhi Sagar Wildlife Sanctuary lies in Mandsaur and Neemuch districts of Madhya Pradesh along the border with Rajasthan, around the reservoir of the Gandhi Sagar dam on the Chambal river. Its mix of open grassland and dry forest was one of the reasons it was chosen as the second cheetah site, and a Kuno-Gandhi Sagar landscape spanning Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan is envisaged for the project.

Why UPSC loves this

  1. Project Cheetah is a Prelims staple. Questions on the source countries, the release site, the year of extinction, the IUCN status and the subspecies distinction appear regularly. Candidates confuse Kuno's earlier proposed role for the Asiatic lion with its current role for the cheetah, and the examiner exploits that.
  2. Mains asks about reintroduction as a conservation tool. Under ‘conservation’ in GS3, a question on the merits and risks of translocating a species from another continent is well within the syllabus. Mortality in the early years, the adequacy of prey and space, and the choice of cheetah over the long-pending relocation of lions to Kuno give material for a balanced answer.

Prelims nuggets

  • The cheetah was declared extinct in India in 1952.
  • The Asiatic cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus) survives in the wild only in Iran; the cheetahs brought under Project Cheetah are African.
  • Under Project Cheetah, cheetahs from Namibia were released into Kuno National Park, Madhya Pradesh, on 17 September 2022, followed by a batch from South Africa in 2023.
  • Project Cheetah is implemented by the National Tiger Conservation Authority, a statutory body under Section 38L of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.
  • Gandhi Sagar, on the Chambal river in Mandsaur and Neemuch districts of Madhya Pradesh, is India's second cheetah habitat after Kuno.
  • The cheetah is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List.

Analysis

  1. A second site is a sign of the first site's limits, not only of success. Moving cheetahs to Gandhi Sagar is presented as expansion, but it also answers a problem visible at Kuno: an unfenced park of limited size cannot hold a growing population of a wide-ranging predator without animals straying into villages. A second site spreads risk from disease or disaster. The logic is sound, but the answer should say plainly that a network of sites is a necessity for the project, not an embellishment.
  2. Second-generation births are the first real test the project has passed. Imported adults surviving is a husbandry achievement; cubs born to an India-born mother show that the animals can complete a life cycle here. KGP12's four cubs are therefore more significant than the headline count of 56. The counter-view is that survival of cubs to adulthood, and breeding without supplementary feeding or intensive monitoring, remain unproven, and a count that includes young cubs is fragile.
  3. Breeding failure at Gandhi Sagar shows how small numbers make management intrusive. The existing female has not mated with the two males, so a new female is brought in. With four animals, every individual matters and every relationship is managed. That is unavoidable at founder stage, but it means the population is still a managed collection rather than a wild one. The measure of success in a decade will be how little intervention it needs.
  4. The cheetah's case rests on grasslands more than on the cat. The best argument for the project is that it gives political attention to open grasslands and savannas, which India's forest law has historically classified as wastelands and diverted to plantations, solar parks and industry. If the cheetah protects that ecosystem, its cost is justified; if it becomes a flagship for enclosures while grasslands elsewhere are lost, it is not.

Possible Mains question

Examine the ecological rationale and the risks of reintroducing the African cheetah in India. Has the establishment of a second habitat at Gandhi Sagar strengthened the case for the programme?

Model approach

  1. Introduction. State the extinction in 1952, the launch at Kuno in September 2022, and today's position: four cheetahs at Gandhi Sagar and a national count of 56 after second-generation births.
  2. Body — the rationale. Restoration of a lost species, grassland conservation, ecotourism and livelihoods, and global conservation diplomacy with Namibia, South Africa and Botswana.
  3. Body — the risks. Adaptation of African animals to Indian conditions, mortality, limited space and prey at Kuno, human-wildlife conflict when animals stray, cost, and the opportunity cost of the pending lion relocation.
  4. Body — the significance of Gandhi Sagar. Risk spreading, a metapopulation across Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, and the difficulty shown by the failed pairing at the new site. Link to the KGP12 births as evidence of reproductive viability.
  5. Conclusion. Conclude that the programme's success should be measured by self-sustaining wild breeding and by protected grassland area, not by headcount.

Administrator's brainstorm

You are the Divisional Forest Officer at Gandhi Sagar. A cheetah strays into farmland and villagers gather with sticks. What do you do in the first hour?

Get the response team and veterinarian to the spot and ask the local police to keep the crowd at a distance, because both the animal and the villagers are at risk. Speak to the villagers directly, explain that the cheetah rarely attacks people and that the team will move it, and ask elders to help hold the crowd back. Once the animal is safe, record any livestock loss and process compensation quickly, since prompt payment is what keeps villagers willing to tolerate the next straying.

An interviewer says that the money spent on Project Cheetah would be better spent on the Asiatic lion or the Great Indian Bustard. How do you respond?

The point about priorities is fair; conservation budgets are limited, and the lion's single-population risk in Gir and the bustard's collapse are serious. But the choices are not strictly substitutable, because the cheetah project brings attention and money to grasslands that also host the bustard and other species. I would argue for evaluating the project on whether it protects grassland habitat and keeps public commitments to other endangered species on schedule, rather than on its own headcount.

As Secretary, Forests in Madhya Pradesh, you are asked to announce a third cheetah site before the next tourist season. The scientific assessment is incomplete. What is your advice?

Advise that an announcement can be made only as a proposal subject to assessment of prey base, space and community consultation. Releasing animals into an unprepared site would risk deaths that damage the entire programme. Give the government a realistic timeline with milestones it can announce, which serves the political need without committing to a premature release.