From cheetahs flown in from Botswana to bustard chicks conceived by artificial insemination in the Thar, India is attempting some of the boldest species-recovery programmes in the world. Their success will depend less on the animals than on the landscapes, and the people, around them.
A continent away, a homecoming
On 28 February 2026, nine cheetahs, six females and three males, arrived at Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh after a journey of about 7,600 kilometres from Gaborone, Botswana, aboard an Indian Air Force C-17 transport aircraft, followed by a helicopter transfer to the park. They were the third international consignment under Project Cheetah, after eight animals from Namibia in September 2022 and twelve from South Africa in 2023.
India declared the cheetah extinct in 1952, the only large mammal known to have been lost from the country since Independence. Project Cheetah, launched on 17 September 2022, is the world’s first intercontinental translocation of a large carnivore aimed at re-establishing a wild population.
The early years were difficult. Several adults died, some from infections linked to winter coats grown in anticipation of an African winter, and cub mortality was high. But breeding has since gathered pace. By early 2026, 39 cubs had been born at Kuno since 2023, of which 27 survived. By mid-2026, India’s cheetah population exceeded 50, more than half of them born in India. Figures vary with the date of counting; the official total should be checked at the time of reading.
Two sites, not one
A central principle of the cheetah action plan is that no single site should hold the entire founder population. Gandhi Sagar Wildlife Sanctuary, on the boundary of Mandsaur and Neemuch districts in Madhya Pradesh, received its first cheetahs in 2025 and now forms a second home. Over time, planners hope corridors between protected areas will allow a connected metapopulation rather than isolated enclosures.
The deeper test is ecological. Cheetahs need open grassland and savanna with adequate prey. India’s grasslands have long been classified as “wastelands” in land records and have been lost to agriculture, plantations and infrastructure. Whether a free-ranging, self-sustaining cheetah population can persist outside fenced enclosures, without frequent supplementation from Africa, will not be clear for years.
The bird that flies into wires
In the Thar Desert, a quieter and arguably more urgent battle is being fought. The Great Indian Bustard (GIB), a metre-tall bird and one of the heaviest flying birds in the world, is critically endangered, with only around 150 believed to remain in the wild, most of them in Rajasthan.
Its single greatest threat is collision with overhead power lines. The bustard’s large body and narrow forward vision make it poor at avoiding wires strung across its habitat, much of which now hosts solar and wind farms. The Wildlife Institute of India (WII) once estimated that about 18 bustards were dying each year from such collisions, a devastating toll for so small a population.
In 2021, the Supreme Court ordered power lines in key bustard habitat to be laid underground. In 2024, after the government argued that burying high-voltage lines over long distances was impractical and would hamper renewable-energy goals, the Court modified its order, set up an expert committee and recognised a right to be free from the adverse effects of climate change, linked to Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution. The case, M.K. Ranjitsinh and others versus Union of India, has become a landmark in balancing conservation with clean-energy expansion.
Science in the breeding centre
Meanwhile, a conservation breeding programme led by WII with the Rajasthan Forest Department, at centres near Jaisalmer, has become the species’ lifeline. The world’s first captive-bred GIB chick hatched in March 2023. In October 2024, a chick hatched from artificial insemination for the first time, using techniques Indian scientists learned from houbara bustard programmes in Abu Dhabi.
By 2026, the programme’s fourth breeding season, 26 chicks had hatched that season: 18 through artificial insemination, four through natural breeding and four from eggs collected in the wild. Reports in mid-2026 put the captive flock at over 90 birds. Experts caution, however, that building a self-sustaining wild population could take decades, and that releasing birds into landscapes still crisscrossed with power lines would simply repeat the problem.
What recovery really requires
These two programmes illustrate both the ambition and the limits of species-centred conservation. Translocation and captive breeding buy time; they do not restore ecosystems. Lasting success depends on protecting grasslands as valuable habitat rather than wasteland, fitting bird diverters and routing transmission lines away from critical areas, involving local communities whose livelihoods share these landscapes, and monitoring populations with rigorous, transparent science.
India’s longer record offers encouragement. Tiger numbers have recovered substantially under Project Tiger, with the 2022 assessment estimating more than 3,600 tigers. That success came from protecting habitat and prey, not just the predator. The cheetah and the bustard will need the same.
Transparency matters too. Project Cheetah has been criticised by some independent scientists for limited public release of monitoring data and for the deaths in its first years. Publishing survival rates, causes of death, prey assessments and movement data in peer-reviewed form would strengthen public trust and allow the wider scientific community to learn from what is, by any measure, a globally significant experiment.
The fight for wild India is ultimately a fight over land use, energy and development priorities. How the country reconciles its renewable-energy ambitions with the survival of its grassland species will be one of the defining environmental tests of the decade.
