India and Botswana on Wednesday officially announced the translocation of eight cheetahs from the African nation to India during President Droupadi Murmu’s state visit.
Expressing gratitude to her counterpart, President Duma Gideon Boko, and the people of Botswana — one of the world’s largest diamond producers — Murmu said, “We will take good care of them (Cheetahs).”
President Boko said his country would symbolically hand over the big cats to “her excellency (Murmu)” on Thursday.
The two leaders are set to jointly preside over a ceremony at the Mokolodi Nature Reserve, about 10 km south of Gaborone, where the eight captured cheetahs will be released into a quarantine enclosure.
The event marks the symbolic transfer of the animals to India under Project Cheetah, a joint wildlife conservation effort between the two nations.
The cheetahs were brought to the reserve from Ghanzi town, located in Botswana’s Kalahari Desert, which covers nearly 70 per cent of the landlocked nation’s territory.
“It gives me special pleasure to note that Botswana is to reintroduce Cheetahs into India under Project Cheetah which is a unique wildlife conservation initiative of the government of India,” Murmu said.
“I am thankful to the President and people of Botswana for sending their Cheetahs to India. We will take good care of them,” she reiterated during a press briefing at the President’s office in Gaborone.
Murmu arrived in Botswana on Tuesday for a three-day state visit — the first-ever by an Indian President to the southern African nation.
