Kuno National Park has witnessed the second fatality in less than one month, of a male feline named ‘Uday’. According to the officials, Uday was among 12 felines translocated from South Africa in February, this year. Reportedly, the deceased cheetah was six-year-old.
In an official statement, a forest official said that Uday was lethargic and was limping. The doctors administered him at around 11 am after which he was taken out from the large enclosures. According to the officials, Uday died at around 4 pm. They also said that the cause of the death will be determined after the post-mortem.
The tragedy is considered a significant setback for the planned “Project Cheetah,” which saw 20 cats sent from Namibia and South Africa in different batches in September 2022 and February of this year to Kuno National Park.
Five-year-old Sasha, a cheetah from Namibia, passed away last month from a kidney ailment. She was one of five female cheetahs flown in from Namibia last year and was among the first group of cheetahs to enter Kuno National Park.
On the occasion of his birthday last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi reportedly released the first group of eight cheetahs. Last year, these cheetahs were transported from Namibia. In addition, there were five females and seven males in the second shipment of cheetahs from South Africa.
In India, the species was deemed extinct in 1952. The Supreme Court decided that African cheetahs, a different subspecies, might be reintroduced into the country at a “carefully chosen location” on an experimental basis in 2020, which sped up efforts to reintroduce the animals.
According to the initiative, founder stock would be brought from South Africa, Namibia, and other African nations for the first five years and thereafter as needed by the program, consisting of 12–14 huge cats that are perfect for starting a new cheetah population. In addition, South Africa and India have agreed to send hundreds of African cheetahs to India over the next ten years under the project.
According to an evolutionary ecologist at the Institute who has researched African cheetahs for more than 20 years and her colleagues, male cheetahs often hold discrete territories that are spaced 20 to 23 kilometres apart.
Some scientists also have questioned the presumptions that Kuno has enough prey to feed up to cheetahs and stated that India’s cheetah introduction initiative may have ignored the animals’ distinctive behavioural “spatial tactics.”
Notably, three Namibian cheetahs were released into the wild in Kuno by project management, while the others are still kept in enclosed enclosures. Last month, a female cheetah from Namibia passed away from kidney failure, which some scientists speculate may have been brought on by her extended captivity.
Whereas, the Union Environment Ministry has said that Kuno has sufficient prey to accommodate the cheetahs.
An official stated on Sunday that a male cheetah that escaped the Kuno National Park (KNP) in Madhya Pradesh last week was saved as it prepared to enter a forest in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh and returned to the park.
Now, Cheetah Oban has been returned to the Kuno National Park twice this month after leaving the park and wandering a great distance. Cheetah Pavan, now known as Oban, was released in the Palpur forest of the Kuno National Park at about 9.30 pm on Saturday after being tranquilised in the Karera forest in the Shivpuri district.
The last cheetah died in India in 1947 in the Koriya district in present-day Chhattisgarh, and the species was declared extinct from the country in 1952.
One of the translocated Namibian cheetahs, Siyaya, gave birth to four kittens at Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park last month, marking a momentous occasion for India’s cheetah reintroduction project, according to forest officials who found the cubs. Since cheetahs became extinct in India in 1952, this is the first litter of cheetah cubs to be born there in more than 70 years.
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