BHOPAL: Kuno National Park (KNP) in Madhya Pradesh’s Sheopur district – the first home of African cheetahs in India – has been blessed with the birth of two more cheetah cubs.
Five-year-old South African cheetah Veera gave birth to two healthy cubs on Tuesday, taking the total number of cheetahs at the KNP to 26, including 14 cubs and 12 adults.
The development came just a day before the state’s CM Dr Mohan Yadav is scheduled to release more cheetahs out of their enclosures into the free ranging forests at KNP to join Vayu and Agni who were released in the forests in December 2024.
Sharing the information along with videos of the newly born twin cubs on social media platform X, the Union minister for environment, forest and climate change Bhupender Yadav, posted, “With the start of Basant season, unending joy and excitement fill the air of Kuno as we welcome the arrival of two new cheetah cubs at the KNP. Aged about 5 years, the cheetah Veera brought from Tswalu Kalahari Reserve, South Africa, has given birth to two cubs today and we celebrate the hope and future they bring. Congratulations to all who cherish this beautiful moment and especially to the team of officers, vets and field staff who are working tirelessly day and night for Project Cheetah. The total number of cheetahs, including cubs, is now 26.”
Expressing joy over the birth of the two cubs, MP CM Dr Mohan Yadav posted on X, “2 cheetah cubs entered the Jungle Book of MP…I’m very happy to share this information that the number of cheetahs is constantly increasing in MP. Congratulations to all the officers, doctors and field staff associated with the project; as a result of their tireless hard work, today MP is also known as the ‘land of cheetahs’.”
Veera, which gave birth to the two cubs, is known to have an adventurous nature. While being in the free ranging forests of KNP last summer, it had strayed out of the KNP boundaries into the adjoining Gwalior district after travelling through the villages and jungles of Morena district. In May 2024, Veera had attacked a herd of goats, taking down three in front of a shepherd.
The birth of the two healthy cheetah cubs to Veera took place nearly three months after two newborn cubs of another SA cheetah Nirva were found dead in a mutilated state in one of the enclosures.
More than seven decades after the fastest moving animal on earth became extinct in the Indian wild due to rampant poaching, eight semi-adult and adult cheetahs from Namibia were reintroduced at the KNP in MP’s Sheopur district on September 17, 2022.
Five months later in February 2023, the first batch of 12 cheetahs flown from South Africa under the same inter-continental cheetah translocation project were introduced at KNP. Out of those 20 semi-adult and adult African cheetahs, eight have died due to multiple reasons.