Why a female cheetah was moved to Gandhi Sagar Sanctuary from Kuno

Madhya Pradesh’s Gandhi Sagar Wildlife Sanctuary, a second home in the works for cheetahs in India, has a new female cheetah inhabitant. Chief minister Mohan Yadav, on September 20, released the wild cat, assigned the call sign ‘CCB 2’, into a specially designed enclosure at the reserve.

The sanctuary, located some 300 km from Kuno National Park, the ground zero of Project Cheetah, already houses two male cheetahs, Prabhas and Pavak, and a female, Dheera.

CCB 2 was brought to Kuno from Botswana with five other female and three male specimens this February.

Prabhas and Pavak were shifted to Gandhi Sagar from Kuno in April 2025. In September, Dheera joined them. But with no reports of breeding in the group in the past one year, wildlife authorities decided to add another female cheetah to the population at Gandhi Sagar.

State forest officials said that usually the number of females exceeds males in a group when the objective is to facilitate breeding, and CCB 2 was moved to Gandhi Sagar as Dheera had not conceived yet.

There is another reason for shifting CCB 2 to Gandhi Sagar. Pavak, Prabhas and Dheera are cheetahs from South Africa. In case CCB 2 (from Botswana) mates with the South African cheetahs, the cubs born would be from a different gene pool. This would boost genetic diversity and make them healthier.

The Gandhi Sagar Sanctuary is spread over roughly 370 sq km in the Mandsaur and Neemuch districts, and borders Rajasthan. The cheetahs are living in a specially designed enclosure that has both prey and predator-proofs the wild cats.

A third home for the cheetahs is being developed at the Nauradehi Wildlife Sanctuary, which is part of the Rani Durgawati Tiger Reserve spanning Sagar, Damoh and Narsinghpur districts of Madhya Pradesh.

Project Cheetah was launched at the Kuno National Park in September 2022. Madhya Pradesh presently has 56 cheetahs, including cubs born in India.