New Delhi, Mar 4 (IANS): Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar on Wednesday said that the government has been working on reintroduction of Cheetah in the country.

On the occasion of the World Wildlife Day, Javadekar tweeted: "India has a thriving wildlife and biodiversity with 70 per cent of the Global Tiger population and 70 per cent of Asiatic Lions. The country also has 60 per cent of Leopard population."

"The Narendra Modi government is working on reintroduction of Cheetah, which went extinct in 1952. This big cat will be a reality soon," he added.

In 2020, the Supreme Court agreed that wildlife authorities could reintroduce the Cheetah to the country.

The country's last spotted Cheetah died in Chhattisgarh in 1947. Later, the big cat was declared extinct in India in 1952.

Now, with the Minister's tweet it seems that after over 70 years later, the fastest land animal appears set to make a comeback in India.

The world's fastest land mammal, Cheetah is considered vulnerable under the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)'s red list of threatened species, with a declining population of less than 7,000 found primarily in African savannas.

Last year, experts from Dehradun-based Wildlife Institute of India (WII) had recommended Kuno-Palpur in Madhya Pradesh as the preferred location for the reintroduction of Cheetah in the country.

They found that Kuno-Palpur has large grasslands, ideally suited to the Cheetah's need to build up speed without worrying about trees or other obstacles. These grasslands were formed, in large part, through the removal of villages and rewilding of agricultural land to make way for the relocation of the Asiatic Lion.