Published: 00:59 BST, 30 August 2026 | Updated: 13:12 BST, 30 August 2026
The beautiful cheetah lies unconscious on the operating table as the world’s finest vets battle to mend her shattered back leg. I watch as they pin the limb together with two titanium plates in a meticulous three-hour operation at an animal hospital in India, where cheetahs were hunted to extinction 80 years ago.
‘A maharaja killed the last three cheetahs in 1947, but he will have fired from an English-made rifle,’ muses Professor Gerhard Steenkamp, the vet who operated on the animal with an eight-strong medical team.
The young cheetah, called Dorcas, was flown here in 2024 from a South African sanctuary thousands of miles away that ran out of funds during Covid.
She has joined an extraordinary 150,000 endangered animals from 2,000 species and 44 countries, all brought to Vantara, the world’s biggest animal sanctuary and conservation centre.
It is owned by the Ambani family, the richest in India, and sits in 4,500 acres in Gujarat state in the west of the country. It has 22 state-of-the-art hospitals where animals are treated and money is no object.
The creatures, including birds and reptiles, have been found in private pet collections, or waiting for death in small cages at bushmeat markets, abandoned in war zones and at defunct zoos.
Elephants have been rescued from European and Indian circuses or from logging camps where they are forced to carry heavy loads for 18 hours a day.
Some of the creatures here were bred in captivity to be shot by illegal trophy hunters or for their body parts in a multi-billion-pound trafficking trade in ivory and traditional medicines. Others have been saved from floods, hurricanes or drought.
Dorcas having her broken tibia pinned at one of the operating theatres at the centre
A ten-year-old royal Bengal Tiger called Pancham was caught up in a conflict between humans and wildlife – he killed eight Indian villagers, some of them as they collected firewood.
‘These tigers don’t actually like the taste of human flesh,’ said Dr Boon Allwin, the senior vet caring for big cats at Vantara, as the animal – growling while waving its tail – lunged at me when I peered into his enclosure during my visit last week. ‘We don’t blame him for what he did. He had tooth problems and was looking for an easy meal of domestic goat when he came across humans and pounced on them from behind.’
At least 100 calls a day come into Vantara from across the globe asking for help. With 5,000 staff, many of them scientists and biologists, the answer is nearly always yes, even with a dangerous customer like Pancham, who was spared retribution because killing tigers is illegal in India.
When a natural disaster hits, a ‘war room’ of the top brass plans how to assist animal victims efficiently and humanely before medical teams are dispatched to find them, whether in far-flung countries or in India itself. The priority is always to try to give them a new home or a guardian in their native habitat, but many are brought here to Vantara.
I was invited to visit the animal sanctuary as it prepares to exchange its groundbreaking research with London’s Natural History Museum in a ten-year agreement, which many believe will have a huge impact on our understanding of wildlife.
