2 cheetah cubs born to Nirva at Kuno national park found dead, cause unknown

Nirva, one of the cheetahs relocated from South Africa in 2022, had shown signs of pregnancy over the past few weeks. It was monitored by a team of wildlife officers, who said that it had shifted over to a den site over the last few days.

The monitoring teams had been waiting for the mother to move out of the den site for hunting to get a visual confirmation of the number of cubs.

Wildlife officials said the cubs have to be looked after by their mother for the first few weeks. “Sometimes, in cases of first-time mothers, these incidents do happen in the wild. They give birth to multiple litters during their lifetime and become better at managing the cubs. Right now it’s difficult to state what happened to the cubs,” said a senior wildlife official.

For the past year, the 24 cheetahs at Kuno – 12 adults and 12 cubs – have been housed inside enclosures. The cheetahs were brought to the enclosures on August 13 last year, after three adults “died due to septicaemia after wounds beneath their dense winter coat on the back and neck regions became infested with maggots” the previous month.

The Kuno cheetah introduction project was meant to develop free ranging wild cheetahs. However, most remain in protective enclosures and will only be released into the wild following approval from the National Tiger Conservation Authority.