Nehru zoo park to get four cheetahs

HYDERABAD: The Nehru Zoological park will soon play host to four cheetahs from Czech Republic as the Central Zoo Authority, ministry of agriculture and environment ministry recently gave site clearance certificates for the programme of animal exchange.“The agreement has been reached and approvals received from the CZA. The necessary follow-up is being taken up to bring the cheetahs in a month and they will be displayed from January 1,” said P Mallikarjuna Rao, AP Zoos director. Cheetahs, the fastest land animal have never been a part of the Nehru zoo in its 50 years of existence. “The Nehru zoo will be the second zoo in the country to get  cheetahs from abroad after the Mysore zoo got a pair of cheetahs from Germany five months back,” said Rao.The Nehru Zoo authorities have been in touch with animal facilities in Czech Republic for cheetahs and after protracted negotiations for six months, a deal has been finally reached. According to the deal, Nehru zoo will get two pairs of cheetahs and in return the Czech zoo would be given a pair of Asiatic lions and five female gharial crocodiles. The Zoos director denied the four cheetahs were a match for a couple of Asiatic lions and five gharial crocodiles. “We are not doing business but exchanging animals in a welfare programme. We have already kept ready a modernised enclosure for the cheetahs,” Rao said.In the past six months, different departments were approached for the mandatory clearances and obtaining NOCs to facilitate shifting of the cheetahs. After bringing the cheetahs, a captive breeding programme would be conducted. The felines are African cheetahs who were captive bred in the zoo there.  However, Indian cheetahs were reported extinct more than five decades ago and the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology had proposed an initiative to clone and revive them but the proposal has yet to take off.