Eight captive-born kittens revive hope for Project Cheetah after seven dead cats

The Kuno National Park is getting ready to release all 14 adult cheetahs back into the wild, over six months after they were all recaptured and placed back into cages. Nevertheless, one of the Namibian cheetahs unexpectedly passed away in the cage last week, bringing the total down to 13.

Four cheetahs were part of the staged release that the forest department began in December: the Agni-Vayu male coalition, Veera, the female, and Pawan, the ferocious male cheetah who has been caught many times. Tracking the animals is challenging since they often travel well outside the park borders. Nevertheless, obstacles persist.

Some of them have been freed, but the most are remained within the huge enclosures, where they are also engaged in independent hunting. All of them must now be released into the wild, but we will do it gradually. The Cheetah Project Steering Committee Chairman, Dr. Rajesh Gopal, said that the next line of action would be chosen at the next meeting of the committee.

Nevertheless, Jwala and Aasha, the Namibian cheetahs who gave birth to two litters in January, will spend more time in the enclosure with the cubs.

Inside the cages, the cats are forced to reproduce. On January 3, Jwala gave birth to three pups, and on January 23, Aasha gave birth to another litter of four cubs. But after its mother rejected it, the first cheetah cub born in India to Jwala in March of last year becomes a year old and is being nurtured by forest authorities.

Following the unexpected death of three cheetahs in July of last year, the forest department was forced to recapture all 14 of the surviving cats and rehome them into bigger cages (bomas) due to a problem with their winter coats that was made worse by the weather. Experts claim that African cheetahs get a thick coat of skin in the winter, which is deadly for the cats during Madhya Pradesh’s steamy monsoon.

Although long-term incarceration of cheetahs, particularly Namibian cats, is still concerning since cheetahs are wild creatures that should be able to survive on their own, authorities are anxious to increase the animals’ chances of survival.

Experts say that once the captive-born cubs develop their hunting abilities and wean off of their mother cheetah, they will likewise be progressively released back into the wild. The goal is to maintain the ecological functionality of African cheetahs in Kuno, where they may live in settings that sustain a wide variety of prey species and rival predators.

One of the largest wildlife projects in India’s history, Project Cheetah aims to bring back the cheetah population, which was declared extinct about 70 years ago. Since September 2022, at least 20 cheetahs—10 males and 10 females—have been relocated from Namibia and South Africa in two groups. Three of the first litter born in March of last year were among the seven who passed away from various reasons.