Cheetah reintroduction project

The cheetah, which became extinct in India after Independence, is all set to return with the Union Government launching an action plan.

Under the ‘Action Plan for Introduction of Cheetah in India’, 50 of these big cats will be introduced in the next five years.

The action plan was launched at the 19th meeting of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA).

‘Reintroduction’ of a species means releasing it in an area where it is capable of surviving.
Reintroductions of large carnivores have increasingly been recognised as a strategy to conserve threatened species and restore ecosystem functions.
The cheetah is the only large carnivore that has been extirpated, mainly by over-hunting in India in historical times.
India now has the economic ability to consider restoring its lost natural heritage for ethical as well as ecological reasons.

The cheetah, Acinonyx jubatus, is one of the oldest of the big cat species, with ancestors that can be traced back more than five million years to the Miocene era.
The cheetah is also the world’s fastest land mammal.
African Cheetah is listed as vulnerable in IUCN red listed species.
The country’s last spotted feline died in Chhattisgarh in 1947. Later, the cheetah — which is the fastest land animal — was declared extinct in India in 1952.
The Asiatic cheetah is classified as a “critically endangered” species by the IUCN Red List, and is believed to survive only in Iran.

The Wildlife Institute of India at Dehradun had prepared a ₹260-crore cheetah re-introduction project seven years ago.

India has plans to reintroduce cheetahs at the Kuno National Park in Sheopur and Morena districts of Madhya Pradesh’s Gwalior-Chambal region.

Facts for Prelims :

Recently, the Union Minister of State for Electronics & Information Technology visited the Gallium Nitride Ecosystem Enabling Centre and Incubator ( GEECI ) facility at the prestigious Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc), Bengaluru.
The facility has been jointly set up by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and IISc Bengaluru aimed at establishing GaN based Development Line Foundry facility, especially for RF and power applications, including strategic applications.

It is a very hard and mechanically stable wide bandgap (WBG) semiconductor, as it has a hexagonal crystal structure.
The critical factors of gallium nitride material responsible for its adoption in the market are reliability, compact size, high efficiency, fast switching speed, low on-resistance, and high thermal conductivity, among other types of semiconductors such as silicon (Si) and silicon carbide (Sic).
The gallium nitride market has been developing significantly since 1990, and much can be attributed to the technological advancements in this field.

It has rapidly transformed the world by enabling energy-efficient white light-emitting diodes and promising energy-efficient power electronic devices.
Bulk crystal growth is actively being researched to enable inexpensive large-area substrates.