On 21 June 2026, President Droupadi Murmu visited Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh, toured the Cheetah Management Area, and was briefed on the progress of Project Cheetah. The visit closes a personal arc for the President: during her November 2025 state visit to Botswana, she witnessed the symbolic donation of eight cheetahs, which arrived at Kuno in February 2026 — the third source country, after Namibia and South Africa, to contribute to the world's first intercontinental large-carnivore reintroduction. For a CDS/OTA aspirant, the visit is a perfect peg on which to hang the entire framework of Indian wildlife conservation.
Project Cheetah: a world-first reintroduction
Project Cheetah was launched on 17 September 2022 — on the Prime Minister's birthday — under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), and is spearheaded operationally by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) with technical support from the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun. Its objective is historic: to re-establish a viable population of the cheetah in India, decades after the species vanished from the wild.
The cheetah holds a melancholy distinction — it is the only large mammal to have gone extinct in independent India. It was declared extinct in India in 1952, the last animals having been recorded in the Sal forests of the Koriya region of present-day Chhattisgarh. The species lost was the Asiatic cheetah (now surviving only in tiny numbers in Iran); because the Asiatic sub-species was unavailable for translocation, India sourced the closely related African cheetah. This makes Project Cheetah the world's first intercontinental translocation of a large carnivore — moving a top predator from one continent to re-establish it on another. The phasing is the high-yield fact:
- September 2022 — the first batch of eight cheetahs from Namibia.
- 2023 — a second batch from South Africa.
- February 2026 — eight cheetahs from Botswana, following the President's 2025 visit.
A vital distinction: reintroduction vs translocation
Examiners love the precise vocabulary of conservation, and Project Cheetah is built on two terms that are easy to confuse. A translocation is the human-mediated movement of living organisms from one area to another. A reintroduction is a specific type of conservation translocation — the release of a species into an area where it was once native but has since become locally extinct (extirpated), with the aim of re-establishing a self-sustaining population. Project Cheetah is therefore a reintroduction achieved through intercontinental translocation: the cheetah was native to India, became extinct here, and is now being brought back from another continent. Globally, the cheetah is classified as "Vulnerable" on the IUCN Red List, which adds a conservation-significance layer to the project. This precise terminology is the sort of static anchor that the running CDS/OTA current affairs file builds answers around.
Kuno National Park — and why it was chosen
Kuno National Park lies in the Sheopur and Morena districts of Madhya Pradesh, in the Vindhyan landscape, and takes its name from the Kuno river that flows through it. It began as a wildlife sanctuary and was upgraded to National Park status, and it sits within a larger forested landscape that gives the cheetahs room to range. Crucially for exam linkage, Kuno was originally developed and considered as an alternative home for the Asiatic lion — to create a second population beyond the lion's sole stronghold of Gir National Park in Gujarat, guarding against a single-site catastrophe (disease, fire, epidemic). That Asiatic-lion translocation plan remains a long-running Supreme Court matter, and the same site now anchors the cheetah's return — a neat "two reintroduction stories, one park" point.
The site selection reflected open grassland-and-scrub habitat, prey availability (chital, nilgai, sambar, four-horned antelope) and low human-density — the ecological conditions a fast, open-country sprinter like the cheetah needs. The cheetah is, after all, the fastest land animal on Earth, capable of bursts approaching 100-120 km/h over short distances, and it hunts by sight in open terrain rather than by ambush in dense forest — a behavioural fact that directly shaped the choice of an open Vindhyan landscape over a closed-canopy forest.
It is also worth distinguishing the cheetah ecologically from India's other big cats. The cheetah is not closely related to the leopard despite a superficially similar spotted coat: it is a slender, non-retractable-clawed, daytime sight-hunter built for speed, whereas the leopard is a powerful, retractable-clawed, largely nocturnal ambush predator that survives across much of India. Confusing the two is a common error; the cheetah's reintroduction adds a new large-carnivore niche to the Indian grassland, it does not duplicate an existing one. This is the kind of precise ecological detail that turns a current-affairs note into a full-marks answer.
The legal and institutional scaffolding
Behind the headlines stands India's wildlife-protection architecture, almost all of it traceable to one statute. The Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 is the bedrock law that protects wild animals and plants, regulates hunting, and creates the system of protected areas. The categories — a guaranteed exam favourite — are:
- National Park (NP) — the most strictly protected; no human activity or grazing permitted; boundaries fixed by the State (with NBWL clearance needed to alter).
- Wildlife Sanctuary (WLS) — protected, but certain regulated human activities may be permitted.
- Conservation Reserve — declared on government-owned land, typically as buffers/corridors, managed with community consultation.
- Community Reserve — declared on private or community land where individuals/communities volunteer to conserve wildlife.
- Biosphere Reserve — a broader UNESCO-linked concept (not created by the 1972 Act) with core, buffer and transition zones.
The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) — the body running Project Cheetah on the ground — is itself a statutory body constituted under the Wildlife (Protection) Act (via the 2006 amendment), and it administers Project Tiger, launched back in 1973 from Jim Corbett. That the NTCA, a tiger authority, now manages the cheetah reintroduction is a frequently-tested twist. Its statutory character — created by Parliament, not the Constitution — is the same distinction that runs through the statutory commissions and the separate set of constitutional bodies; knowing which bucket a body falls into is worth easy marks.
Two further institutions complete the picture. The National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) is the apex advisory body on wildlife, chaired by the Prime Minister, whose clearance is needed to alter the boundaries of national parks and sanctuaries. The Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehradun, is the technical research body that provided the scientific design — habitat assessment, prey-base study, soft-release protocols and radio-collar monitoring — for the cheetah's reintroduction. Layered above all of this are India's biosphere reserves and the conservation reserve / community reserve categories that the 2002 amendment to the 1972 Act introduced to formally involve local communities in conservation, recognising that protection cannot succeed against the wishes of the people who share the landscape.
There is also a candid story of difficulty worth a balanced answer. The early phase of Project Cheetah saw mortalities among both adults and cubs, driven by factors ranging from the stress of translocation to infections and the challenges of acclimatising African animals to the Indian monsoon. Far from being a footnote to bury, this is exactly the nuance examiners reward: a strong answer presents Project Cheetah as a bold, scientifically pioneering but inherently risky experiment whose success will be measured over years, not months — the establishment of a free-ranging, self-sustaining, breeding population, which remains the project's true benchmark. The Botswana batch of 2026 is a sign of continuing international confidence and a deepening of India-Africa conservation diplomacy.
🎯 Practice MCQs
Q1. Project Cheetah was launched in India on: (a) 17 September 2022 (b) 1 April 2023 (c) 2 October 2021 (d) 5 June 2022 → (a) — Project Cheetah was launched on 17 September 2022.
Q2. The cheetah was officially declared extinct in India in the year: (a) 1947 (b) 1952 (c) 1972 (d) 1991 → (b) — The cheetah was declared extinct in India in 1952.
Q3. Project Cheetah is operationally spearheaded by which body? (a) Wildlife Institute of India (b) Central Zoo Authority (c) National Tiger Conservation Authority (d) Botanical Survey of India → (c) — The NTCA, a statutory body under the Wildlife Protection Act, runs it.
Q4. The first batch of cheetahs (September 2022) was sourced from: (a) South Africa (b) Botswana (c) Namibia (d) Kenya → (c) — The first eight cheetahs came from Namibia.
Q5. Kuno National Park is located in which state, on which river? (a) Rajasthan; Chambal (b) Madhya Pradesh; Kuno (c) Gujarat; Sabarmati (d) Maharashtra; Tapi → (b) — Kuno NP lies in Madhya Pradesh on the Kuno river.
Q6. A "reintroduction" in conservation refers to releasing a species into an area where it: (a) Has never lived (b) Was once native but became locally extinct (c) Is currently abundant (d) Is an invasive pest → (b) — Reintroduction targets areas of former native presence after extirpation.
Q7. Which protected-area category is the MOST strictly protected under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972? (a) Wildlife Sanctuary (b) Conservation Reserve (c) National Park (d) Community Reserve → (c) — National Parks have the highest protection; no grazing/human activity.
Q8. Project Tiger, also administered by the NTCA, was launched in: (a) 1972 (b) 1973 (c) 1985 (d) 2006 → (b) — Project Tiger was launched in 1973.
📋 How this gets asked (PYQ pattern)
- CDS/OTA repeatedly tests the protected-area hierarchy (NP vs WLS vs Conservation/Community Reserve vs Biosphere Reserve) and which are/are not created under the 1972 Act.
- The cheetah's 1952 extinction date and its status as the only large mammal extinct in independent India are recurring one-liners.
- The NTCA-runs-cheetah twist (a tiger body managing the cheetah) and Project Tiger's 1973 launch are favourite "match/odd-one-out" items.
- The 2026 fresh hook: the Botswana batch and the President's Kuno visit let an examiner pair the reintroduction vs translocation distinction with Kuno's older role as a proposed second home for the Asiatic lion — a layered question that rewards depth.
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✍️ Written by Aditya Tiwari — Defence current-affairs & GK faculty at The Cavalier. Reviewed by the Cavalier Faculty Desk. The Cavalier has trained NDA/CDS/SSB aspirants since 2001 (Facebook · YouTube).
Source: President's Secretariat / MoEFCC PIB release, 21 June 2026 (PRID 2276382). Facts cross-verified.