Project Cheetah Suffers Another Setback as One More Big Cat Dies at Kuno, Death Toll Mounts to 7

One more cheetah has died at Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park, giving another jolt to the government’s ambitious Project Cheetah. The male was among the 12 big cats brought from South Africa this February and was named Tejas. At around 11 am, the monitoring team of the forest department noticed some injury marks on the upper part of the neck of the male cheetah. The wildlife doctors were informed and they inspected the cheetah. However, according to the forest department, the wounds appeared to be serious.

“The male cheetah was later found dead at the spot around 2 pm. The injuries sustained by the Cheetah Tejas are being probed. The exact cause of death will be ascertained after the post mortem,” the department said in a statement. The cheetah has died in the enclosure and was yet to be released into the wild. According to forest officials, infighting with another female cheetah could have led to the fatal injury.

India has so far lost seven cheetahs since it conducted the historic translocation exercise of cheetahs from Namibia and South Africa in September last year. Two of the three adults died due to illness, while the third died during a violent interaction. This was followed by the deaths of three cubs born to a Namibian cat due to the scorching summer heat.

The latest casualty has taken the number of deaths to seven in just five months. Out of the total seven dead, four were adults aged above four years, while the cubs were just two months old.

The big cats classified as endangered wildlife species were brought to India as part of Project Cheetah – a grand experiment to revive its population in the country. While eight were brought from Namibia, they were joined by 12 more from South Africa this February.

Questions now loom large over one of the world’s biggest such translocation projects, with wildlife conservationists flagging their concerns.

The cheetahs have remained in the enclosures for far too long. News18 had reported earlier that, according to experts, the density of leopards at Kuno is far greater than in African ecosystems, which may lead to increased pressure on the cheetahs. In addition, Kuno has other large carnivores that are not known to cheetahs, including wolves, sloth bears, dhole dogs and, occasionally, a dispersing tiger that wanders through from a nearby reserve.