India's Supreme Court orders gov't not to reintroduce cheetahs

New Delhi, May 10 (Xinhua-ANI): India's Supreme Court has ordered the central government to suspend a move to reintroduce the cheetah which has been hunted to extinction in the sub-continent, local media reported.

A two-judge bench, in fact, stayed the government's ambitious plan to import the big cats from Africa after a senior lawyer told the apex court that the plan had not been discussed with the National Board for Wildlife, a statutory body for the enforcement of wildlife laws in India, 'The Times of India' newspaper reported.

He told the court that scientific studies showed that the Asian cheetahs and African cheetahs are completely different, both genetically and also in their characteristics.

Earlier the government had approved two wildlife reserves in the central state of Madhya Pradesh and the northern state of Rajasthan as homes for the imported cheetahs.

Though the big cats vanished from India decades ago, conservationists say that fewer than 100 of cheetahs remain in Iran while the vast majority of the 10,000 cheetahs left in the world are in Africa. (Xinhua-ANI)