Bhopal (MP): Panicked by the death of cheetahs, the Madhya Pradesh government has decided to shift the big cats from Kuno National Park (KNP) to Gandhi Sagar and do so before the Assembly elections in the state.
Two more India-born cheetah cubs died at the KNP, officials said on Thursday. With this, the number of cheetah cubs that have died at the KNP rose to three, while three of the 20 adult cheetahs translocated from South Africa and Namibia have also died at the park. A cub's death had been reported in the park on May 23. The two other cubs also died on the same day, on Tuesday afternoon, but their deaths were reported only on Thursday.
On the continuous death of the big cats, Madhya Pradesh Forest Minister Vijay Shah said that only 22 or 23 cheetahs can be kept in Kuno National Park. "So we are shifting them to another place as soon as possible, for which preparations are in full swing," he said. The KNP houses cheetahs translocated from Namibia and South Africa as part of an ambitious project to revive their population in India after the species became extinct in the country seven decades ago.
As per an official release, after the death of a cheetah cub on May 23, the forest department's monitoring team kept an eye on the movements of female cheetah Jwala and her remaining three cubs. Jwala, earlier known as Siyaya, gave birth to four cubs in the last week of March after being translocated from Namibia in September last year.
The monitoring team found on May 23 that the condition of her remaining three cubs was not good and decided to rescue them for treatment. The daytime temperature then was around 46-47 degrees Celsius, the release said. The cubs were found severely dehydrated. Despite treatment, the two cubs could not be saved, it said.
The condition of the fourth cub was stable, but it too was under intense treatment, it said. Earlier, Sasha, one of the translocated Namibian cheetahs, died due to a kidney-related ailment on March 27, and another cheetah, Uday, from South Africa, died on April 13. Daksha, a cheetah brought from South Africa, succumbed to the injuries following a violent interaction with a male during a mating attempt on May 9 this year.
India should fence Cheetah habitats; worst still to come: South African expert
Meanwhile, South African wildlife expert Vincent van der Merwe on Thursday recommended fencing the cheetah habitats to circumscribe the overall threat to the big cats recently introduced in the country, prevent their "extreme ranging behaviour," and protect the prey base from anthropogenic pressures.
Fencing can also aid in habitat restoration efforts by controlling access and grazing pressure from domestic animals, he said. Van der Merwe said that the reintroduction project is going to see even higher mortalities in the next few months when cheetahs try to establish territories and come face to face with leopards and tigers in the Kuno National Park.
He was sadly on the mark with his prediction given the deaths of cheetah cubs on Thursday. "Very unfortunate, but not unusual for first-time mothers to lose their first litter," he said. In an interview with PTI, Van der Merwe, who is closely involved with the project, said though the cheetah deaths have been within the acceptable range, the team of experts that reviewed the project recently did not expect males to kill a South African female cheetah during courtship and "they take full responsibility for this."
"There has never been a successful reintroduction (of cheetahs) into an unfenced reserve in recorded history. It has been attempted 15 times in Africa and it failed every time. We are not advocating that India must fence all of its cheetah reserves, we are saying that just fence two or three and create source reserves to top up sink reserves," Van der Merwe said.
Merwe, manager of the Cheetah Metapopulation Project in South Africa, said the best way forward right now would be to get at least three or four cheetahs to Mukundra Hills, and let them breed up there. "Mukundra Hills is fully fenced. We know that cheetahs will do very well there. The only problem is that it's not fully stocked at the moment. So you'll have to bring in some black buck and chinkara. And when the fencing is completed at Nauradehi and Gandhisagar, we will have three fenced reserves and then we are absolutely winning," he said.
The conservationist presaged more cheetah deaths outside of the fenced enclosures in the next few months. "That's where the real dangers lie. That's where you can expect mortality due to hunting injury. The cheetahs, of course, will continue to establish territories and fight with each other and kill each other for territories and for access to females. They're going to encounter leopards. There are now tigers moving around in Kuno. The worst mortalities are still to come," he said.
Though the death of three adults and three cubs is perfectly within the normal mortality rates experienced in reintroduction, it is very unfortunate that these cheetahs died inside the enclosures, Van der Merwe said. "There seems to be a frenzy in India, we've lost four cheetahs and the project is failing. That is not true. Cheetahs naturally have high mortality rates. And we observed these same mortality rates in Africa when we reintroduced them into unfenced systems," he said.
The conservationist said he was not worried about the cheetah carrying capacity of Kuno national park. "When you drive in from the side of the national park, you see a very small number of animals. It's only when you reach the center of the park that you see cheetals and spotted deer at the natural densities, so Kuno is not stocked to its full capacity with cheetals, spotted deer, samba deer and nilgai. And that's because it's unfenced. There must have been human-related factors that have impacted the prey populations at Kuno," he said. (Agency inputs)
