How a 2010 boom in South African cheetah population could mean 500 new big cats for India... 🤯
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AnimalsTranscript
00:00Since 1979, India has looked towards Africa as a source of cheetah for
00:29reintroduction and since 2020 we've been in negotiations with the Indian
00:50government to get South African cheetahs to India.
01:29Before we load the crates we just need to get photographs left and right.
01:39Namibia is making 8 animals available for reintroduction in India and South Africa is
01:43making 12 animals available.
02:01It's a lot better to have a smaller cage than a bigger one or like a crate and that's purely
02:06because it doesn't give them space to try run against the side to get out.
02:15So after they've been woken up they usually use a long-lasting anesthetic which just comes
02:22out of the system quite slowly as opposed to other opioids which you can reverse and
02:28then they'll be completely awake and very stressed.
02:39So what we did today was is we immobilized four cheetahs okay two adult males and two
02:44adult females and we've loaded them into transport crates and they will be traveling to Maramau
02:50in the Zambezi Delta in Mozambique.
02:52So Vincent van der Merwe will be traveling with the cats through the night they will
02:56then hop onto an airplane and travel over into Mozambique early in the morning.
03:26So we're going to send every every year we'll send 8 to 12 animals to top them up to increase
03:55their numbers to bring in new genetics until they have a viable population.