Three years ago, India did something no country had done in living memory: it brought back a large predator from extinction.
Cheetahs had vanished from the Indian subcontinent in 1952, hunted to oblivion after millennia as one of the most iconic creatures of the country's grasslands. Their return — engineered through careful diplomacy, habitat restoration, and translocations from Namibia and South Africa — was called Project Cheetah. When the first eight animals arrived at Kuno National Park in September 2022, it was described as one of the most ambitious wildlife reintroductions in history.
This week, it reached another milestone.
Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav announced the confirmed birth of a fourth cub to Gamini, a South African female cheetah at Kuno — pushing India's total cheetah population to 39. The fourth cub was identified through intensive monitoring by field and veterinary teams who have been tracking Gamini closely since her three previously confirmed cubs were announced just days earlier.
"Kuno National Park is pleased to announce the birth of a fourth cub to female cheetah Gamini," the minister shared. "All four cubs are presently healthy and doing fine."
The numbers tell a remarkable story. Of the 39 cheetahs now in India, 28 have been born on Indian soil — cubs conceived and delivered within the country's national parks and reserves. That's not just a survival statistic. It's proof that the animals have not merely survived the transition to a new continent, but adapted well enough to thrive, breed, and raise young.
Gamini is a second-time mother. Her repeated successful breeding is exactly what conservation managers hoped to see — evidence that the population can sustain itself without continued imports. The programme places intensive emphasis on cub survival: continuous health monitoring, habitat assessment, and veterinary oversight that tracks each animal from birth.
Project Cheetah has had its challenges. Early deaths were widely reported. Critics questioned whether the habitat was suitable. But three years in, the trend line is unambiguously upward. Breeding is happening. Cubs are surviving. The grasslands of Madhya Pradesh are learning to live with the fastest land animal on Earth again.
For a species that was gone from a nation for 70 years, 39 individuals — and counting — is a quiet, extraordinary triumph. 🐆
