9 dead, 2 unfit, 1 missing under a year: Cheetah project falls short of its own benchmark

In effect, the project’s founder adult population of 20 has functionally shrunk by 45% to 11 with six months still to go.

This, records show, when not a single cheetah was lost to the risk factors — competition with other predators and conflict with local people — anticipated by the Project’s Action Plan.

Indeed, barring two, all deaths occurred inside bomas and the two cheetahs that died on the other side of the fence succumbed to injuries caused by radio collars that also killed two animals inside.

“This is indeed shocking given the global scrutiny and the high-profile nature of the introduction project which was flawed on several counts since the very beginning,” said conservationist Valmik Thapar.

Of the eight cheetahs flown in from Namibia last September, three were captive-raised by Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF). One of the three, Sasha, was the project’s first casualty and the other two — Jwala and Nabha — were never released outside the enclosures since they landed in Kuno 11 months ago.

Multiple experts and officials associated with the project offered insights to the “compromise” when Namibia’s CCF could not organise more than five “wild” cheetahs  — those from larger fenced areas — and offered three animals raised in captivity as “research subjects” to meet the “hard deadline” set by India.

“The original plan was to bring all 20 cheetahs together. But since the South Africans took a lot of time with their MoU, and since the deadline was not negotiable, we went ahead with getting only the Namibian lot,” said an expert involved in the process.

That is how, said a source in the Environment Ministry, the three captive-raised cheetahs became part of the consignment. “We all knew those three would not last in the wild. One was anyway sickly from the very beginning and died of kidney failure. The other two are kept inside bomas as breeding females,” he said.

Asked why two captive raised cheetahs were sent to India, CCF executive director Dr Laurie Marker said: “Under our direction, these animals would do well. All were hunting and the two alive ones still are.”

She did not comment on why the surviving two were never released outside the enclosure. Marker is one of the experts who has also written to the Supreme Court.

Dr YV Jhala, the then lead scientist of the project, declined comment.

When contacted, SP Yadav, member secretary of the NTCA that runs the Cheetah project, said: “Are they not good for conservation breeding? One cub born of one of the two is surviving and showing healthy growth. These two females are of wild origin but reared in captivity. We have excellent success with re-wilding orphan cubs of tigers, lions and leopards.”

Jwala, one of the captive raised females, had the first litter of the project on March 29. But, said sources in Kuno, she failed to make her cubs shift from milk to meat. By the time Kuno’s monitoring unit noticed the four underweight, dehydrated cubs, it was too late for three of them.

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“After a couple of months, the cubs leave the den and start following their mother. As her milk production falls, the cubs also start eating milk until they shift totally to meat. This did not happen with Jwala’s cubs. Female cheetahs struggle to raise their first litter,” said an expert associated with the project.