Kuno National Park, Madhya Pradesh | August 27, 2026
India’s cheetah reintroduction programme is entering a new phase, with third-generation cheetahs born in India expected to eventually roam the forests of Kuno National Park without radio collars.
According to Kuno National Park field director Uttam Sharma, the change could come in the next two to three years, as India-born cheetahs become increasingly adapted to their surroundings. Only a small number of animals would continue to be radio-collared for monitoring.
A shift towards natural, independent living
At present, all 30 cheetahs in Kuno are radio-collared, including 18 that are living in the wild.
However, officials believe that continuously collaring every animal will eventually become impractical as the population grows.
The approach is also consistent with the Cheetah Action Plan, according to Sharma. He pointed out that even in tiger reserves, only selected tigers are fitted with radio collars while most animals are monitored through other methods.
The long-term objective is for India’s cheetahs to become sufficiently established in the landscape that they can live and reproduce without constant electronic tracking.
Population is growing
Kuno’s cheetah population is expected to expand significantly in the coming years.
According to the report, 19 cubs are expected to reach one year of age after March 2027. Several female cheetahs will also reach reproductive age, potentially leading to further births.
As the population increases, fitting every individual with a radio collar would become increasingly difficult and expensive.
The development represents an important milestone for Project Cheetah: moving gradually from intensive monitoring of newly introduced animals towards a population that can increasingly function independently in the wild.
Radio collars are expensive to maintain
The current system requires considerable resources.
A single radio collar costs approximately ₹4 lakh and has an expected life of around one year, after which it needs to be replaced. The collars are imported.
In addition, a tracking device costing about ₹3 lakh is used to monitor each collared cheetah. The programme also assigns nine forest personnel and a vehicle to each radio-collared cheetah for tracking.
With the population expected to increase, maintaining such an intensive tracking system for every animal would place a substantial logistical and financial burden on the programme.
Cheetahs increasingly adapting to Kuno
The proposed change also reflects growing confidence in the ability of India-born cheetahs to adapt to the Kuno landscape.
Official Project Cheetah monitoring has documented cheetahs establishing home ranges, hunting native prey and displaying natural behaviours in the wild.
The programme has also recorded successful reproduction in Kuno. In February 2026, the birth of three cubs to Gamini, a South African-origin cheetah, brought the number of surviving India-born cubs to 27 at that time.
What happens when collars are removed?
The move does not mean monitoring will stop.
Instead, officials are expected to increasingly rely on camera traps, field observations, pugmarks, prey-kill records and other wildlife-monitoring techniques, while continuing to collar selected animals when there is a specific conservation or research need.
The transition will therefore be gradual rather than an abrupt end to technological monitoring.
From reintroduction to self-sustaining population
When the first cheetahs arrived from Namibia in September 2022, intensive monitoring was essential because the animals were entering a completely new environment.
Four years into the programme, the emergence of a third generation born in India marks a fundamentally different stage.
These young cheetahs will have been born in the Indian landscape rather than translocated from Africa. If they successfully establish territories, hunt naturally, reproduce and survive independently, they could form the foundation of a truly self-sustaining population.
For Project Cheetah, allowing future generations to roam without collars could therefore become one of the clearest signs that the species is gradually becoming wild in the fullest sense of the word in central India.
Source credit: This story is based on a report by The Free Press Journal, “Born To Be Wild: MP’s Kuno 3rd-Generation Cheetahs To Roam Free Without Radio Collars,” by Rajan Raikwar, published on August 26/27, 2026.
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