Another cheetah dies at MP’s Kuno National Park: forest officials

• Details were not immediately available on the latest Cheetah death.
• This comes on the back of the death of seven cheetahs in Kuno since March this year, with one of them occurring earlier this week.
• The deaths have made wildlife experts question the way the African felines have been handled and suggested more experienced veterinarians be involved in taking care of these animals.

In yet another blow to the government’s cheetah reintroduction programme, forest officials on Friday confirmed the death of one more cheetah at Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh. Details were not immediately available. This comes on the back of the death of seven cheetahs in Kuno since March this year, with one of them occurring earlier this week.


The cheetah reintroduction programme, which was launched with much fanfare in September last year, saw 20 cheetahs relocated to KNP from Namibia and South Africa. From 24 cheetahs - including four cubs born at the KNP - the total count of felines at the KNP has now dropped to 16. With this, eight felines, including three cubs born to Namibian cheetah 'Jwala', have died at the KNP since March.


The cheetah deaths have made wildlife experts question the way the African felines have been handled and suggested more experienced veterinarians be involved in taking care of these animals. In the last incident that was reported, male cheetah Tejas died in the KNP on Tuesday. The autopsy report revealed the cheetah was "internally weak" and unable to recover from a "traumatic shock" after a violent fight with a female cheetah, according to a forest official.


Talking to PTI, Dehradun-based Wildlife Institute of India's (WII) former dean and senior professor Y V Jhala said, "Though cheetah deaths were expected in this reintroduction programme, more surprising is the fact these mortalities happened in the enclosed bomas where they were least expected. Cheetahs were expected to die after release from the safe enclosure, not within it."


Similarly, the death of three cubs "in captivity" was also surprising and puts a question mark over their handling. If the cubs were malnourished, then they should have been given supplements to make them healthy, he said while terming these deaths as a "big loss" for the re-introduction programme and a costly learning experience.


A minimum of three-to five sites like Kuno are required for the cheetah reintroduction project to succeed in India, with a proper budget allocation by the central government, Jhala said.


A retired dean of the Jabalpur-based Nanaji Deshmukh Veterinary Science University, who did not wish to be named, also expressed concern over the death of seven cheetahs in a span of four months.


"The re-introduction programme is good and in such exercises, few mortalities are also expected," he said.


He suggested that senior experienced veterinarians be involved in the team managing the cheetahs, for the success of this ambitious reintroduction programme.


Another retired professor from the university on condition of anonymity said a cheetah or any other animal translocated from another continent faces difficulties in acclimatisation, be it the habitat, food or weather conditions.


The survival rate of such captured wild animals, like deer or others, is just 20-30%, he claimed. He also suggested roping-in of more experienced veterinarians in the team handling the cheetahs for better management of the reintroduction project.


Wildlife activist Ajay Dubey from Bhopal also demanded that Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan make changes in the cheetah management team by deploying trained wildlife officers at the emergency level for better results.


The fastest land animal was declared extinct in the country in 1952.

(With inputs from PTI)