Eight cheetahs will arrive in India this week and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will release them into a national park in a grand ceremony on his birthday on September 17 (Saturday).
The high-profile visitors will land in five helipads constructed 18 km into the park.
The cheetahs, five females and three males, will arrive on Friday in a special plane from Namibia. After a 10-hour journey, they will land in Jaipur, from where an Air Force helicopter will bring them the next morning to the Kuno National Park spread over 748 square km in Madhya Pradesh.
A 10-feet high platform has been put up for PM Modi, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav, officials say. The cheetahs will be in a six-foot cage below this platform.
At 12.05 pm, the Prime Minister will turn a lever to open the sliding gates of the cage and release the cheetahs.
After releasing three of the cheetahs, PM Modi will address "Cheetah Mitras (friends of cheetahs)" from surrounding villages.
These Cheetah Mitras have the task of making people living in some 45 villages near the national park aware of how to handle the big cats, should any stray into their neighbourhood. "They are being told that cheetahs are not a threat to human beings and that they never attack humans. If a cheetah strays into their village, the villagers should immediately inform sanctuary officials who will take immediate action," an official explained.
The national park has been closed off for security reasons.
In the first month, officials say, the cheetahs will be quarantined in a 50 m by 30 m enclosure. The cheetahs will land around 200 m from this enclosure, say officials.
When the isolation is over, they will be moved to a larger enclosure.
Cheetahs were declared extinct in India in 1952; they perished mainly because of habitat loss and hunting for their distinctive spotted pelts.
A prince is believed to have killed the last three cheetahs.
The government has been working to reintroduce the animals after the Supreme Court announced that African cheetahs, a different subspecies, could be settled in a "carefully chosen location" on an experimental basis.
India is also planning to ship in more cheetahs from South Africa later.
The Kuno park was selected for the project to reintroduce the cheetah because of its abundant prey and grasslands.
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