One day after the death of a female cheetah brought from Namibia, the absence of experts in Cheetah Task Force has been flagged before the Supreme Court of India. The Cheetah was brought from Namibia under an ambitious translocation project and released in Madhya Pradesh's Kuno.
Senior Advocate Prashanto Chandra Sen claimed the Environment Ministry-appointed task force did not have a single expert known for Cheetah management. Following this Justices BR Gavai and Vikram Nath directed: “We request the learned Additional Solicitor-General to place on record the details, on an affidavit, with regard to the qualification and experience of the members of the task force and also specify as to which of the members possess expertise in Cheetah management within two weeks, the Live Law reported.
The division bench was hearing an application moved by an expert committee constituted to “guide and direct” the National Tiger Conservation Authority with respect to India's ambitious cheetah reintroduction programme.
Senior Advocate Sen was representing this expert committee which was constituted by the Supreme Court in 2020.
Sasha, the five-and-a-half-year-old female cheetah, succumbed to a kidney infection on Monday and was found dead in her cubicle in central India’s Kuno National Park where the Modi administration had brought eight wild cats in September last year, according to a report in the Independent.
According to the report, the treatment history taken from the Cheetah Conservation Foundation, which helmed Project Cheetah with the Indian administration after monitoring the Indian territory for more than a decade, has confirmed that the wild cat had kidney disease before even arriving in India, the officials said in a statement.
One of the five females India had translocated under its contentious programme, Sasha was initially found on a farm near Gobabis, a town in east central Namibia, by farm workers in late 2017. At the time Sasha was skinny and malnourished but was gradually nursed back to health, the Independent report said.
According to the report, Project Cheetah aims to repopulate India with vulnerable animals some 74 years after they were hunted to extinction. After another translocation project on 18 February of 12 cheetahs, India is now hosting a total of 19 African wild cats brought from Namibia and South Africa.