Big cats

Prelims

• The cheetah, Acinonyx jubatus, is the fastest land animal and hunts by daylight sprint rather than ambush.
• It is Vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.
• It was declared extinct in India in 1952, and the animals here now descend from founders brought from Namibia in 2022.
• Its Indian range is Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh and Gandhi Sagar, with Banni Grassland in Gujarat and Nauradehi Wildlife Sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh to follow.
• The population stood at 52 in September 2026, from 29 founders, with 49 cubs born in India.
• Project Cheetah is the programme that covers it.

Prelims

Project Cheetah is the programme that brought the animal back and now has to settle it. The Union Environment Minister reviewed it at Bhuj on 13 September 2026, four years after the first founders landed.

• The test has moved from survival to spread, since Kuno holds the founders and the cubs born to them while Gandhi Sagar is the second site to receive animals.
• Banni Grassland and Nauradehi Wildlife Sanctuary are being readied to take cheetahs next.
• More of the present population was born in India than was flown in, which is the change a reintroduction has to produce before it can stand on its own.

Prelims

Protection costs money, and the money for tiger landscapes has so far come out of forest budgets. The Alliance has now signed with a development bank, on the argument that a tiger landscape is natural capital and can be financed as such.

• The International Big Cat Alliance (IBCA) was launched by India at Mysuru in April 2023, marking 50 years of Project Tiger.
• It is headquartered in India and covers seven big cats: the tiger, lion, leopard, snow leopard, cheetah, jaguar and puma.
• It signed a memorandum of understanding with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) at a tiger landscapes workshop organised with the NTCA.
• The workshop's case was that a landscape should be managed whole rather than reserve by reserve.
• The ADB was founded in 1966 and is headquartered in Manila.