Despite the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) having green signaled the `300-crore Project Cheetah, which involved translocating African cheetahs from Namibia to Palpur Kuno Sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh, environment minister Jayanti Natarajan is not willing to commit herself on this project.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Global Tiger Recovery Programme (GTRP), Ms Natarajan admitted that a final decision on Project Cheetah was to be taken by the Cabinet. But this would have to wait till such time as the Supreme Court took a call on the entire cheetah re-introduction programme.
A forest bench of the Supreme Court had restrained the government from going ahead with the project, especially since it had been pushed through without consulting the National Board for Wildlife (NBW), which is a statutory body for the enforcement of wildlife law.
Experts have pointed out that the International Union for the Conservation of Nature guidelines have shown that the African cheetah and Asian cheetah are genetically very different.
The IUCN guidelines warn against the introduction of alien species which are not part of the native species.
The Asiatic cheetah was once common on the plains of India but was hunted to extinction.