Cheetah of Kuno

Kuno National Park is the primary site for Project Cheetah, India's programme to bring the cheetah back into the wild after the species went extinct in the country in 1952.

The project is widely described as the world's first intercontinental translocation of a large carnivore — moving cheetahs across continents and reintroducing them into a landscape where they had been absent for more than seven decades.

But Project Cheetah did not end when the first cheetahs were released.

It is an active, closely monitored conservation programme, with real successes, real setbacks and a population that is still growing and adapting to its new home.

Visiting Kuno means seeing that story while it is still unfolding — not visiting a finished conservation project.

Moving a species across continents and attempting to establish a new population in a landscape where it disappeared more than seventy years ago was never going to be simple.

Project Cheetah has experienced mortality and other setbacks alongside its successes.

The project's monitoring has documented deaths associated with causes including injuries and other health-related problems.

This is part of the reality of working with free-ranging wild animals.

The response has been an active veterinary and monitoring programme, including health checks, treatment, disease surveillance, ectoparasite management and continuous tracking.

GPS collars allow field teams to monitor movement and identify unusual behaviour or inactivity.

The project is therefore not a simple release-and-hope programme.

It is an adaptive conservation effort where decisions continue to change as scientists and field teams learn more.

Kuno was always intended to be the beginning, not the entire story.

The long-term approach is to establish a metapopulation across multiple suitable landscapes.

The idea is simple: if the entire population depends on one landscape, a major problem such as disease, drought, habitat pressure or overcrowding could affect the whole project.

Multiple populations provide greater resilience and allow the project to manage cheetahs at a landscape level.

Project Cheetah is also a story about people.

The conservation programme has created new opportunities for communities living around the cheetah landscape.

Local residents have been trained as Cheetah Mitras, supporting awareness, monitoring and communication between communities and the project.

Local people have also been trained in cheetah tracking and nature guiding.

Schools around the landscape have been involved through awareness and outreach programmes.

This matters because long-term wildlife conservation cannot happen without the support of the people who live alongside the protected landscape.

Tourism also has a role to play.

When visitors stay locally, use local guides, book safaris and spend money in the surrounding area, wildlife tourism can create an economic reason for communities to value the landscape.

Project Cheetah is an international conservation programme.

India's work with Namibia, South Africa and Botswana goes beyond simply receiving animals.

It involves scientific cooperation, animal selection, veterinary planning, transport, monitoring, population management and long-term conservation planning.

The arrival of the Botswana cheetahs in 2026 is one example of this continuing international cooperation.

The success of the project therefore depends on relationships between governments, conservation scientists, wildlife managers, veterinarians and field teams across countries.

Project Cheetah is not simply about bringing one animal back to India.

It is an experiment in restoring a missing predator, rebuilding ecological processes, developing new conservation landscapes and creating a long-term population across multiple sites.

Its success will ultimately be measured over decades, not a few safari seasons.

Kuno is where that story is happening today.

And it is still being written.