Cheetah rehabilitation programme in MP delayed due to COVID-19 pandemic: Minister

Madhya Pradesh Minister Vijay Shah on Thursday said the scheme to rehabilitate cheetah, the fastest mammal on land, in Kuno National Park of Sheopur district has been delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.The minister was speaking to reporters here after inaugurating a forest development office.The scheme to rehabilitate cheetahs by translocating them from Africa got delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Madhya Pradesh Minister Vijay Shah on Thursday said the scheme to rehabilitate cheetah, the fastest mammal on land, in Kuno National Park of Sheopur district has been delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The minister was speaking to reporters here after inaugurating a forest development office.

"The scheme to rehabilitate cheetahs by translocating them from Africa got delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the estimated Rs 75 crore needed for the programme has already been arranged through Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds of private companies," Shah said.

A cheetah was last spotted in the country in Chhattisgarh in 1947 and by 1952, there were none left in the country.

The minister further said the newly-inaugurated forest development office will carry out plantation work in the Malwa-Nimar region. ''Of the total saplings planted by the forest department, we give the guarantee of turning 80 per cent of them into trees. We take money from private companies to carry out plantation work in places where forests have been wiped out and in return, these companies get carbon credit," Shah said.

The forest development corporation was in talks with companies in Andaman Nicobar Island, Goa and other seaside states to rope them in for plantation schemes, he said, adding that the department also wishes to approach foreign firms for the same.