Last September, on his birthday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi released eight cheetahs brought from abroad into India's Kuno National Park at a lavish ceremony. Another 12 cheetahs were later brought in under an ambitious project to return the cheetah to Indian soil after nearly seven decades. Everything was going well. But suddenly death seems to have struck the cheetahs brought from Namibia and South Africa. Over the past four months, seven cheetahs have died in India one after another, threatening the success of the government's cheetah reintroduction project.

News agency PTI reported that a male cheetah named Tejas died at Kuno National Park (KNP) last Tuesday (11 July). The cheetah had been brought from South Africa in February. This brings the total number of cheetah deaths there since March to seven, three of them cubs of a cheetah named Jwala brought from Namibia.

JS Chauhan, Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (PCCF) Wildlife, said Tejas, about four years old, is suspected to have died because of an internal fight.

At the time, the cheetah was in an enclosed area. At around 11am on Tuesday, members of the monitoring team saw wounds near Tejas's neck and called the vets. But by the time they arrived with permission to use a tranquilliser, it was 2pm, and the cheetah had died. The authorities said the exact cause of Tejas's death would be known after the post-mortem.

Earlier, in March, the cheetah Jwala gave birth to four cubs, but three of them died in May from dehydration and weakness.

Before that, on 27 March, Sasha, a cheetah from Namibia, died of kidney complications. On 13 April Uday, a cheetah from South Africa, died. On 9 May another South African cheetah, Daksha, died in a violent clash with a male cheetah during an attempt at mating.

Eight Namibian cheetahs, five female and three male, were released into Kuno National Park on 17 September, Narendra Modi's birthday. Another 12 were brought from South Africa in February. When a Namibian cheetah gave birth to four cubs in March, the total at KNP reached 24. With the deaths, that number has now fallen to 17.

The Asiatic cheetah once ranged across a vast area from India to the Arabian Peninsula. But India declared the cheetah extinct in 1952; the last cheetah in the region is thought to have died in 1947. Many attempts were made afterwards to bring the cheetah back to India, but none succeeded. Most recently, through Narendra Modi's initiative, cheetahs are roaming the country's forests again after seven decades.

Citing Hindustan Times.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.