Then Minister of Environment and Forests, Jairam Ramesh, told the Rajya Sabha on 7 July 2009 that "The cheetah is the only animal that has been described extinct in India in the last 100 years. We have to get them from abroad to repopulate the species." He was responding to a notice from the Bharatiya Janata Party. "The plan to bring back the cheetah which fell to indiscriminate hunting and complex factors like a fragile breeding pattern is audacious given the problems besetting tiger conservation." Two naturalists suggested the idea of importing the South African cheetahs from Namibia, breeding them in captivity in India and release their offspring into the wild.