New Delhi: Two cubs of translocated African cheetah Jwala have died in Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park, days after the first sibling passed on 23 May.
Park authorities said the cubs died under observation after being weakened by the sweltering heat at the national park. Jwala, who was brought from Namibia to Kuno in September 2022, now has one cub left.
So far, three cubs and three adult cheetahs — of the initial 20 brought from Namibia and South Africa — have died from various causes.
South African wildlife expert Vincent van der Merwe, however, told news agency PTI that these deaths did not mean that the “Cheetah Project” – the world’s first intercontinental large wild carnivore initiative – was failing.
“Cheetahs naturally have high mortality rates. And we observed these same mortality rates in Africa when we reintroduced them into unfenced systems,” he said.
He said the reintroduction project would see more deaths in the next few months “when animals try to establish territories and come face to face with leopards and tigers in the Kuno National Park”.
The expert advised that India should fence two to three habitats for cheetahs as “there has never been a successful reintroduction into an unfenced reserve in recorded history”.
Cheetahs went extinct in India in 1952, prompting the government to fly in 20 animals in two batches — eight from Namibia last September and 12 from South Africa this February – to “revitalise and diversify India’s wildlife and its habitat”.
But since March, three adult cheetahs and three cubs have died. Female Sasha, a captive-bred cheetah, died in March from a kidney disease. Wildlife authorities said she had been suffering before she was flown to India.
In April, Uday died during treatment after being found sick. Female Daksha from South Africa died on 9 May, killed in a “violent interaction” with an adult male coalition which included Vayu and Agni, also known as the “White Walkers”.
On 23 May, the first of Jwala’s four cubs died, also due to weakness. Jwala had given birth on 24 March.
The world’s first translocation initiative is being closely watched by conservationists from India and abroad. In October last year, experts from five countries published a letter in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, and called the project “ecologically unsound”, “costly” and one that “may serve as a distraction rather than help global cheetah and other science-based conservation efforts”.
Also read: India should fence Cheetah habitats; worst still to come: South African expert