Another cheetah died in Kuno Natonal Park

A senior state forest official, on the condition of anonymity, said that they do not have enough logistic support to maintain the cheetahs brought in two batches of 8 and 12. felines from namibia and South Africa respectively since September last year. The official told PTI-language on the condition of anonymity, “We need nine personnel to keep an eye on one leopard round the clock. We don’t have enough hands.

When asked about the lack of space, the official said it was secondary and added that “not just space, we need a lot of logistics.” In particular, prior to the importation of cheetahs, some experts had raised doubts about the lack of space that could affect the cheetahs. Reforestation project in Kuno National Park (KNP), which has a core area of ​​748 sq km and a buffer zone of 487 sq km. On Sunday, the KNP witnessed the death of a second cheetah in less than a month, in the form of a six-year-old child. A male feline named Uday, brought in from South Africa, died in February.

An official had earlier said that the exact cause of the cat’s death is yet to be identified. The incident is being seen as a major setback for the aspirant.project cheetahUnder which 20 cats were transferred from Namibia and South Africa to KNP in Sheopur district in separate batches in September 2022 and February this year. One of the eight Namibian cheetahs, Sasha, who was more than four-and-a-half years old, died of kidney disease at the KNP on March 27. Another cheetah named Siya recently gave birth to four cubs at KNP. In addition, Cheetah Oban, now named Pawan, has defected from the KNP several times.

Madhya Pradesh’s Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife) JS Chauhan told PTI that his department has requested the National Tiger Reserve, which is monitoring the world’s fastest-growing animal breeding project in India, requesting an alternative site for the cheetahs. (NTCA) has written a letter. “We wrote the letter a few days ago,” he said. The letter demanded that the Center decide on an alternative site according to forest officials. Wildlife sanctuaries in MP as alternate sites, it will take two years and three years respectively,” said an official.

Months before the cheetahs were brought to India, a risk management plan was drafted, stating that a “contingency plan” was being put in place to deal with serial escapes. Permission is being obtained to release these animals in Mukundra Hills. Tiger Reserve (in Rajasthan) “This protected area has 80 kilometers of fence, sufficiently full of game (places with herbivorous populations) to keep serial escapes at bay.

The enclosure is free of tigers but supports low densities of leopards, wolves and striped hyenas. to other protected areas in India in the near future,” it said.

MP forest officials said that it is not a matter of two states. “The Center has a major role. We need a note from the Center to move forward. We desperately need an intervention from the Centre. If they don’t take a decision, it will be detrimental to the interest of the Cheetah project.” said a state forest official. “We cannot release all the 18 cheetahs in the KNP into the wild,” the official said.

But, said KNP director Uttam Sharma, “No one really knows how much space a cheetah needs because these cats became extinct here seven decades ago. In fact, after their translocation from Namibia and South Africa We’re learning about them.” Bhopal-based journalist Deshdeep Saxena, who writes on wildlife and the environment, said the international community of cheetah experts and biologists has always questioned the project as “unscientific”. Approach”.

He claimed that there is a problem of lack of space and prey for African cheetahs in the KNP. He further claimed that all 12 cheetahs brought from South Africa were under stress as they were captured nine months ago for relocation and were confined to small enclosures. Saxena, who has written a book on tigers, said they need to be released into the wild.

“In fact, the officials and ground staff associated with the project are also under stress because of the hype around it,” he added. “What if 14 more cheetahs are released into the wild,” he thought.

“There is an urgent need to develop the 4,000 sq km of landscape adjacent to the KNP for easy movement of cheetahs,” Saxena said. These imported animals were raised in fenced game reserves in the two African countries from where they were brought to the KNP.

“Their exit poses the risk of man-animal conflict,” he said. According to the researchers, the plan to introduce African cheetahs to India was made without considering their endemic ecology. He also warned that the abandoned animals could lead to disputes with people from neighboring villages.

Spatial ecology addresses the fundamental effects of space on the movement of individual species and the stability of multi-species communities. Scientists from the Leibniz-IZW’s Cheetah Research Project in Namibia argue that in southern Africa, cheetahs live in a stable socio-spatial system with widely dispersed territories and densities of less than one individual per 100 square kilometers.

He added that the plan for cheetah in the KNP assumes that high prey density will maintain high cheetah density, even though there is no evidence for this. In a paper published recently in the journal Conservation Science and Practice, the researchers said that since the KNP is small, it is likely that released animals will venture far beyond the park’s boundaries and cause conflicts with neighboring villages.

The text of this story is published from a wire agency feed without any modification. Only the headline has been changed.