India Plans Return of the Cheetah

Will the world’s fastest land animal make a comeback in India, nearly half a century after it became extinct in the country? A serious initiative is afoot to bring the cheetah back to India and make it, as many wildlife experts say, the flagship species of the country’s grasslands, which do not have a single prominent animal now. A similar effort in the 1970s — India was then talking to Iran, which had around 300 cheetahs at that time — flopped after the Shah of Iran was deposed and the negotiations never progressed