Days After India Lost A Female Cheetah, Four Cubs Are Born In Kuno National Park

In some great news for the cheetah reintroduction programme in India, the country welcomed the first set of cubs born here on Wednesday.

Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav said on Wednesday that four cubs have been born to one of the cheetahs translocated to India from Namibia last year.

SCREENGRAB

First cheetah cubs born in India

The minister congratulated the entire team of Project Cheetah for their relentless efforts in bringing back the large carnivore to India and for correcting an ecological wrong done in the past.

Under the ambitious Cheetah reintroduction programme, Prime Minister Narendra Modi released the first batch of eight spotted felines -- five females and three males -- from Namibia into a quarantine enclosure at Kuno in Madhya Pradesh on his 72nd birthday on September 17 last year.

Reuters

In a second such translocation, 12 cheetahs were flown in from South Africa and released into Kuno on February 18.

Cheetah is the only large carnivore that got completely wiped out from India due to overhunting and habitat loss.

One translocated cheetah died

The four cubs were born just days after the reintroduction programme suffered a major setback following the death of Sasha, a female cheetah that had died due to a kidney-related ailment on Monday.

CCF

While Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (PCCF-Wildlife) JS Chauhan said Sasha died because of a kidney ailment which she suffered even before her translocation from Namibia, the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF), the international organisation that facilitated the historic translocation of Namiban Cheetahs to India last year said it had no history of any health issues.

"While Sasha's kidney values were slightly elevated (410 ?mol/L, which is slightly above the upper limit of 376 ?mol/L), she showed no clinical signs, had no sign of infection, and her ultrasound showed no abnormalities, therefore this was attributed to her being slightly dehydrated at the time of the examination. Blood becomes more concentrated from dehydration so values become more concentrated, but these values reduce with sufficient hydration," CCF said.

Reuters

Cheetah reintroduction a success

Terming the death a very sad incident, the CCF said that the overall reintroduction so far has proven to be a major success, with four cheetahs currently out in the wild of the park and three cheetahs awaiting release.

"Project Cheetah will continue. While we do understand and accept there will be losses associated with introducing these cheetahs, we also look forward to celebrating the first Indian cubs born to a Namibian cheetah very soon," it had said on Tuesday.

For more on news and current affairs from around the world, please visit Indiatimes News.