Two more India-born cheetah cubs have died in Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park (KNP) for the country’s ambitious cheetah population revival programme, a forest official said on Thursday. This brings the number of cheetah cubs who have died in KNP to three, while three of the 20 adult cheetahs imported from South Africa and Namibia also died in the park. On 23 May the death of a cub was reported in the park. Two other cubs also died on the same day, Tuesday afternoon, but their deaths were reported only on Thursday.
The official did not disclose the reason behind not informing about the death of these two cubs on the same day. The KNP houses translocated cheetahs from Namibia and South Africa as part of an ambitious project to revive their population in India after their extinction in the country seven decades ago. According to an official release, after the death of a cheetah cub on May 23, the monitoring team of the forest department tracked the movements of the female cheetah Jwala and her remaining three cubs. Jwala, earlier known as Siya, gave birth to four cubs in the last week of March after being shifted from Namibia in September last year.
The monitoring team found on 23 May that the condition of her remaining three cubs was not good and decided to save them for treatment. The day temperature at that time was around 46-47 degree Celsius, the release said. The cubs were found to be severely dehydrated. Despite treatment, both the cubs could not be saved. The condition of the fourth cub is stable, but he is also undergoing intensive treatment. Earlier, one of the translocated Namibian cheetahs, Sasha, died of a kidney-related ailment on March 27, and Uday, another cheetah from South Africa, died on April 13.
Daksha, a cheetah brought from South Africa, succumbed to his injuries on May 9 this year after a violent interaction with a male during an attempt to mate. Siya/Jwala’s four cubs were the first to be born in the wild on Indian soil after the last cheetah was hunted in 1947 in Koriya district of present-day Chhattisgarh. This fastest land animal species was declared extinct in the country in 1952. On September 17, 2022, five female and three male cheetahs brought from Namibia were released into enclosures at KNP in an event attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Another 12 cheetahs were brought from South Africa in February 2023 and kept in a quarantine enclosure.