5 more cheetahs to be released into wild at Kuno before monsoon

Uday had died just over a week after his release from Boma (quarantine enclosure) to the larger enclosure within KNP.

The ministry reiterated an earlier statement by Madhya Pradesh Forest Department that Uday was stumbling around “in an uncoordinated manner and was unable to lift his head”. He was sedated by the veterinary team and treated symptomatically. Blood and other samples were collected to send to the lab for examination but he had died that afternoon.

Four Namibian cheetahs have till date been released from fenced acclimatisation camps in KNP. The five animals chosen now for release were picked based on their behavioural characteristics and approachability by the monitoring teams, the statement noted. The remaining 10 cheetahs will remain in acclimatisation camps for the duration of monsoon, it said.

Once the monsoon is over in September, the situation will be reassessed, the ministry stated.

The ministry stated that the decision was taken after a team of experts reviewed the status of “Project Cheetah” on the National Tiger Conservation Authority’s (NTCA) directions. The team comprised Prof Adrian Tordiffe, veterinary wildlife specialist from University of Pretoria, South Africa; Vincent van dan Merwe, manager, Cheetah Metapopulation Project, South Africa; Qamar Qureshi, lead scientist, Wildlife Institute of India; and Amit Mallick, I-G Forests, NTCA. The team visited Kuno on April 30 and submitted its report to the ministry.

The team observed that it is “impossible to determine” the precise cheetah-carrying capacity at KNP “until cheetahs have properly established their home ranges’’. Cheetah home-range sizes and population density, the report stated, can vary “tremendously for different cheetah populations in Africa, and for obvious reasons, we do not have useful spatial ecology data for cheetahs in India yet”.

On Uday’s death, the ministry stated that the initial postmortem “revealed that he had most likely died of terminal cardio-pulmonary failure” and that the rest of his organ tissues “appeared to be relatively normal except for a localised area of potential haemorrhage in his brain’’. There were no other signs of injury or infection.

A Namibian female cheetah, Sasha, had died of chronic renal insufficiency in March. Unlike Uday, she had contracted kidney disease during her captivity in Namibia, experts have said. She was never released from quarantine.