Express Weekend Read | The Kuno question: For cheetah cubs, the wild awaits. But are they ready?

Though the park has over 100 dedicated individuals — from animal trackers to forest guards — to keep a watchful eye on the cubs, the crucial task comes with a strict boundary: the staff has to stay as far as they can from the den itself.

As a senior wildlife official at the park explains, “The mother cheetah is incredibly sensitive to stress. If she feels threatened, she might abandon or even harm her cubs. A small mistake can cost them their lives.”

Despite the deaths of seven adults and three cubs since the project’s launch in September 2022, park officials are ecstatic about the arrival of seven new cheetah cubs — four born to Jwala and three to Asha — in January. Pavan, a “friendly” cheetah among the lot from Namibia, has fathered all seven cubs. On the wobbly limbs of these newborns, along with Jawala’s 10-month-old cub from an earlier litter, rest the future of India’s cheetah programme.

The recent births, officials say, suggest acclimation to Indian conditions, a crucial step towards long-term success. However, challenges remain. Summer’s scorching heat, responsible for last year’s death of three cubs, looms large. Park officials are preparing to mitigate the impact of the upcoming summer on the 21 cheetahs, including the cubs, while also determining the timing for releasing 14 adults from the enclosures into the wild.

The cheetahs have been housed in the larger enclosures since August 13, 2023, after three cheetahs “died of septicaemia” in July. This was a major setback for the project and the 15 cheetahs, which had by then been released into the wild, were brought back to their enclosures.

Jwala’s orphaned cub. It was abandoned after it was rescued by wildlife officials. (Photo: Kuno National Park)

But the bigger question that park officials are grappling with is whether to raise the cheetahs cubs in the wild or inside a protected enclosure, which are free from predators and which have a steady supply of prey.

The risk with the latter, however, is that growing up, the cheetahs may not learn crucial life lessons to survive in the wild. But for now, the focus is on keeping them alive.

An abandoned cub and big questions

Jwala delivered her first litter in March last year — the first cheetah cubs to be born in the park. But the timing of the births coincided with punishing weather conditions that swept through the sanctuary — three of her cubs died in May. A glimmer of hope remained in the form of her sole surviving cub. Facing a critical situation, park officials decided to take away the fourth cub from Jwala while she was feeding on a fresh kill.

The Kuno monitoring staff during an assignment. (Photo: Kuno National Park)

This decision would eventually prove costly. Once the cub was nursed back to health and reintroduced to Jwala a week later, she attacked her cub. The abandoned cub now spends its time inside a quarantine boma, housed next to Jwala’s enclosure, separated by a fence. Park officials have been extensively monitoring the cub, feeding it a diet of dressed meat and watching for signs of weakness or abnormal behaviour. “The cub is healthy and has survived winter. Without its mother’s guidance, it will now have to learn how to hunt on its own. It was recently injured in the foot but has recovered after medical intervention,” says a wildlife official.

Sitting outside his home in Shivpuri, minutes after returning from a gruelling assignment inside the forests, Kuno National Park Director Uttam Sharma counts off the co-predators inside Kuno that can potentially kill the cub if it is released into the wild: “Leopard, striped hyena, jackal, Indian fox and jungle cat. When we were conserving tigers, it was easier… the tiger has no predators. Who will teach it (the abandoned cheetah cub) to avoid them?”

Cheetah cubs at their den site. (Photo: Kuno National Park)

As the debate over when and how to release the cub into the wild weighs heavy, park officials say they will soon consult experts and chalk out a rewilding programme for the cub.

“We will introduce it to a larger enclosure, where it will refine its hunting skills by chasing down smaller prey, free from predators. One day, we hope it will be a free-ranging cheetah. Since it’s female, we expect it to do well since females are usually solitary and hunt alone,” says the officer.

Experts say the 10-month-old cheetah should have been hunting with its mother by this time and climbing small trees which serve as the animal’s observation points. Cheetah cubs usually separate from their mothers by about 18 months of age. While brothers form a male coalition and hunt together, females live solitary lives.

A close watch on the cubs — from a distance

Next door to her abandoned cub’s boma is Jwala’s enclosure – most of these range from 50 to 150 hectares — where she is with her four newborns, all of them tucked away safely in dens.

The mother cheetah makes these ‘den sites’ — the first one, after a 93-day gestation, when she hides herself in thick bushes to nest and give birth. After birth, the cubs live in the den for the next six to eight weeks, with the mother regularly moving them from one den to another to avoid predators.

In another part of the park is Asha, in a similar enclosure with her three cubs.

Senior wildlife officials say the cubs — all born between January 3 and 23 — are currently feeding on their mothers’ milk. They say that the mothers have “been able to hunt without assistance” and that they have been supplementing the enclosures with a steady chital population. “Our job is to make a list of all the kills the cheetah makes inside these enclosures and spot the chital carcass. We take one compulsory photograph of the cheetahs every day. This helps us maintain the belly score (a way to look at the belly to see if it has eaten),” says a monitoring team official.

Cheetah Mitras make arrangements at Sesaipura villages. Over 400 Cheetah Mitras have been tasked with educating the villagers on cheetahs. (Photo: Anand Mohan J)

Officials are setting up solar-powered, predator-proof electric fences in the larger enclosures to protect the mothers and their cubs. So far, the electric fencing has been built across 12 km of the park. “The fence has a pulsating current of 7-9 kV. It is not lethal but will deter the predators. This will ensure the cubs are not eaten by the predators,” says an official.

Each cheetah has three dedicated monitoring teams, each with 15 people and with a forest watcher, forest guard and researchers. The tracking teams relay the information to the Control Room at Palpur, a remote location in the centre of Kuno which serves as the central hub for monitoring and controlling all activities related to the cheetahs. Currently, there are four veterinarians who are the only ones authorised to enter the den site in case of an emergency.

Stressing on the need for this “minimal intervention”, park Director Sharma says they have been using technology to observe the cheetahs and the cubs. “The mothers are tracked with the help of the satellite collars. The mothers leave the den site every few days to hunt. Over time, when you look at the GPS data, you can see that the cheetah’s movements form a star-shaped pattern. This pattern shows that the mother is going out to hunt and then returning to the den. Which means that at least one of her cubs is alive. If the cubs die, then the mother doesn’t return to the den after hunting,” he explains.

Park officials have been planning summer survival measures for the cheetahs in larger enclosures, starting with steps to improve water availability both for the cheetahs and their prey population in the larger enclosures.

“We are mostly setting up sacks filled with sand across the Kuno river, which will increase water retention and percolation in Kuno. Even sustaining the flow of the water bodies by a month is a huge advantage for the prey population,” says a senior official.

A Cheetah Mitra at an event in Sesaipura. Most of them are still waiting for monetary incentives for their job. (Photo: Anand Mohan J)

Keeping the cheetahs’ unique cooling needs in mind, park officials are planning to build shade structures and small water bodies. Currently, these enclosures are equipped with water saucers and water guzzlers, with refilling arrangements from overhead tanks constructed outside the enclosure. “Unlike a tiger, a cheetah doesn’t immerse itself in a water body to cool itself,” says Sharma.

Senior wildlife officials at the park say they are also up against geographical constraints — Kuno receives only around 70 mm rainfall, because of which water bodies end up dry in the summer months.

“Because of low rainfall, we don’t have perennial streams in the park. The prey population decreases over time because of this and leaves the park in search of water,” an official says.

A chital enclosure is also in the works to augment the prey base.

“We are constructing a chital bada (enclosure) which will be spread across 80 hectares. This should be ready in two months. We will source chitals from Pench tiger reserve, breed them and release them. We hope to artificially increase the prey density to over 37 prey per sqkm in the park; currently it is around 18-20 prey per sqkm,” says another wildlife official.

All of this circles back to the old debate — by artificially providing for the mothers, and thereafter their cubs, are they being turned into “soft cheetahs”? But will releasing them into the wild expose them to bigger threats?

From the park to the wild

A senior South African cheetah expert, who played a key role in India’s Project Cheetah, says, “There is a 90 per cent chance the cubs don’t survive due to the predators once they are released into the wild. For example, research in Tanzania’s open Serengeti system showed cheetah cubs were estimated to have only a 4.8 per cent survival rate from birth to adolescence. So the Kuno officials will try to increase survival by keeping the cubs safe in enclosures, away from hyenas and leopards. They are going to artificially protect the cubs from danger and you are not protecting the best genetics… India should be aiming for an ecologically strong cheetah that can survive in the wild without human interference. These are soft cheetahs, which will constantly need vets and medication.”

The Tiktoli gate of Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh. (Photo: Anand Mohan J)

Petro van Eeden, General Manager at the Ann van Dyk Cheetah Centre – De Wildt in South Africa, says though the preference is always for a “free cheetah mom raising her cubs, however, this comes at a high risk”.

Eeden says it is “difficult to raise the cubs in the wild. If other predators share the same space, there will always be conflict over food and space”.

Kuno Director Sharma says they have considered both options and are “waiting for senior officials to take a call.” “It would be best if the cheetahs were free-ranging and in the wild. But under the circumstances, they have a better chance at survival in an enclosure…Our management of cheetahs is different from that of the South Africans. They have fenced enclosures unlike our park, which is open. Our cheetahs venture into villages and travel long distances. We have to think differently,” he says.

With the South African experts warning that there has “never been a successful rewilding project in an unfenced area”, a lot rides on the 450 cheetah mitras living in 80 villages around Kuno to ensure the protection of these animals if they ever venture out of the park.

The cheetah mitras

Madhya Pradesh Forest Minister Nagar Singh Chouhan made his first visit to the park on January 27 and attended a meeting of cheetah mitras at Sesaipura village.

Man Singh Ravat, a farmer from Shyampur village, has turned up in his yellow cheetah mitra uniform. “I travel to villages and tell people that a cheetah doesn’t kill humans. A cheetah once came into our village and people were upset that it would kill their sheep. I offered Rs 10,000 for each sheep it killed. The animal left peacefully,” he says.

Due to a lack of water bodies in the dry forests of Kuno, officials have started water retention projects. (Photo: Anand Mohan J)

The park, spread across an area of 748 sqkm, is devoid of human settlements and forms part of the larger Sheopur-Shivpuri forest landscape. People from the Sahariya tribe, besides pastoral communities of Gurjars and Yadavs, were relocated to the periphery of the park to make space for the cheetahs.

At Lahroni village, Ramesh Sikarwar, a former dacoit, brandishes his old rifle as he talks of how he had once sworn to protect the cheetah “at all cost” from poachers. He is now a disillusioned man. Wanted in over 70 murder cases, Sikarwar dominated the Kuno landscape until his surrender in 1984. “I was acquitted in all the cases. I later became a cheetah mitra, but left due to lack of monetary incentives,” he says.

At Tiktoli village, villagers have managed to find jobs as animal trackers and drivers. One of them, Brijmohan ‘Adivasi’, who works as a tracker, says, “We are paid around 9,000 a month… But tourism has not yet picked up. If you keep cheetahs in cages, who will come to see them?,” he says.