BHOPAL: Thirteen days after three cubs were born to Namibian cheetah Aasha at Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park (KNP), an adult Namibian male cheetah Shaurya died at the park on Tuesday.
The death of Shaurya, which was among the cheetahs flown from Namibia on PM Narendra Modi’s 72nd birthday in 2022, means that since March 2023 -- when the first death of a cheetah Sasha was reported due to chronic renal failure -- seven adults and three cubs have died at the KNP.
According to the official statement released by the Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (APCCF) and Director Lion Project, “Today, on 16th January, 2024 around 3:17 PM, Namibian cheetah Shaurya passed away. Around 11 AM in the morning, incoordination and staggering gait was observed by the tracking team following which the animal was tranquilized and weakness was found. Following this, the animal was revived but complications arose post revival and the animal failed to respond to CPR. Cause of death can be ascertained after post mortem.”
Shaurya and sibling Gaurav -- originally known as Rockstars Freddy and Elton -- were among the two male sibling coalitions (Agni and Vayu or the White Walkers being the other) which formed the first batch of Namibian cheetahs flown in to India on September 17, 2022. The eight cheetahs were released into the KNP in Sheopur district by PM Narendra Modi, marking the unveiling of perhaps the first inter-continental translocation project to reintroduce cheetahs in the Indian wilds, from where the fastest moving animal on earth went extinct seven decades ago.
Shaurya and Gaurav were housed in one big enclosure and the KNP management now has a tough task to manage the other sibling Gaurav aka Elton in Shaurya's absence.
In June 2023, Shaurya and Gaurav (the Rockstars) and Agni and Vayu (the White Walkers) were embroiled in a territorial fight in the open jungles.
Last month, the White Walkers were released into the open jungles, after which one of them had strayed into adjoining Rajasthan’s Baran district and was tracked and captured after long efforts, since when that coalition too was housed in one of the big enclosures of the park.
This latest tragedy came more than five months after the last death of an adult cheetah at KNP. In August 2022, Namibian female Tbilisi aka Dhatri was found dead in the park’s open jungles.
With ten deaths (including three cubs) since March 2023, now 13 adults (including Namibian and South African adults) and four cubs born to two separate Namibian females survive at the KNP.
Last year, in an affidavit filed before the Supreme Court, the central government through the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) had stated that the deaths of the cheetahs were troubling, but not “unduly alarming.”
It was also mentioned in the affidavit that the general scientific awareness is that cheetahs have a very low survival rate of 50 per cent in adults even in non-introduced populations. In the case of introduced populations, the survival rates are even lower taking other variables into account which may lead to about 10 per cent survival in cubs, and thus, mortalities (at KNP) though troubling and in need of redressal and curtailment are not unduly alarming.
Earlier, in May 2023, CP Goyal, the DG (Forests) at the Union ministry of environment, forest and climate change, while denying that the cheetah deaths were caused by lapses, had said that the Cheetah Action Plan clearly mentions that even if 50% of the translocated cheetahs survive in the first year of introduction, this experimental project of reintroducing them in the Indian wilds will be considered successful in the short run.
