India’s Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change told delegates from more than 100 countries in Jaipur that India’s Ramsar-listed wetlands have grown from 24 to 101 in a decade.
cheetah
Gaurav, one of the eight Namibian cheetahs that founded India’s cheetah reintroduction programme in 2022, died at Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh on Monday, four days after an India-born cheetah at the same reserve gave birth to a second litter, having lost her first four cubs to suspected predation in May.
A second villager injured in an August jackal attack in Jharkhand’s Bokaro district has died, 36 days after the bite and despite receiving anti-rabies vaccination, leaving ten other injured villagers demanding a fresh medical review before anyone else falls ill.
The Union environment ministry granted environmental clearance in April to the Chentikheda irrigation project, which will submerge eight villages around Kuno National Park in Sheopur district, Madhya Pradesh — the only place in India with a wild cheetah population.
Three weeks of India wildlife news, distilled: a landmark trafficking bust rescuing 440+ animals, cheetahs getting a third home at Nauradehi, a Great Indian Bustard chick surviving 40 days in Kutch, the Gir lion structural crisis, wild water buffalo returning to Kanha after a century, and early AITE 2026 tiger census results.
A camera trap in Kuno National Park has photographed a caracal — India’s most critically endangered wild cat — for the first time in decades. The sighting is remarkable. What it means for the species is more complicated.
A male hoolock gibbon has used an artificial canopy bridge over a railway line in Assam — the first documented instance anywhere in the world of a gibbon crossing a railway canopy structure. Meanwhile, 22 days after four cheetah cubs were found dead at Kuno, the post-mortem findings remain unpublished.
India’s environment ministry has announced five thematic conservation events — one for each wild big cat species — across the country ahead of the International Big Cat Alliance Summit in New Delhi on 1 June 2026. The countdown to the Delhi Declaration has officially begun.
Two Botswana female cheetahs released at Kuno today bring Project Cheetah’s count to 57. But the real story is Madhya Pradesh’s wider conservation push — new tiger reserves, elephant plans, vulture rehabilitation, and a compensation overhaul.
India’s land records classify open grasslands as “wasteland” because they carry no trees. That single word is why the Great Indian Bustard is disappearing, why the blackbuck needs reintroduction programmes, and why the cheetah has no secured wild habitat to return to.