Two cheetahs dead in Kuno National Park in past month: What’s ailing the big cat in India?

Two cheetahs have died at Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park in the past month. The South African cheetah ‘Uday’ passed away on Sunday – nearly a month after Namibian cheetah ‘Sasha’ died of a kidney ailment in March. A senior forest department official on Monday said ‘Uday’ died of a cardio-pulmonary failure. “As per the preliminary observation by veterinarians who performed the autopsy of the male cheetah, he died of cardio-pulmonary failure,” Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (PCCF), Wildlife, J S Chauhan told PTI. A full post-mortem report is awaited, he added. Uday was one of a dozen cheetahs flown in from South Africa, while Sasha was among the eight cheetahs translocated from Namibia. But what’s ailing cheetahs in India? Let’s take a closer look: According to Indian Express, “Project Cheetah”, which was given a fresh boost by the Central Government last year, predicted its short-term success as just half the introduced big cats surviving, The Print quoted Kuno chief wildlife warden JS Chauhan as saying that keeping all the animals at one place was risky and that he’d asked the Centre to find another suitable habitat.

“We wrote the letter a couple of days ago,” Chauhan told PTI.

Chauhan said while Sasha was ill even before it came to India, he’d like to find out the cause behind Uday’s demise. Just last week, researchers claimed that the introduction of African cheetahs to India was planned without considering their spatial ecology. Spatial ecology addresses the fundamental effects of space on the movement of individual species and on the stability of multispecies communities. Scientists of the Cheetah Research Project of Leibniz-IZW in Namibia argue that in southern Africa, cheetahs live in a stable socio-spatial system with widely spread territories and densities of less than one individual per 100 square kilometres (km²). The plan for cheetahs in Kuno National Park assumes that the high prey density will sustain high cheetah densities, even though there is no evidence for that, they said. In a letter published in the journal Conservation Science and Practice on Thursday, researchers noted that as Kuno National Park is small, it is likely that the released animals will move far beyond the park’s boundaries and cause conflicts with neighbouring villages. Kuno National Park is an unfenced wilderness area of approximately 17 by 44 kilometers (about 750 km²). [caption id=“attachment_12362652” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Sasha passed away in March. ANI[/caption] Based on a calculation of the local prey density, it was calculated that 21 adult cheetahs could be sustained by the prey base in Kuno National Park—equivalent to a density of about three individuals per 100 km². Based on their research results from a long-term study of the spatial behaviour of cheetahs in Namibia, as well as comparable work in East Africa, scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Leibniz-IZW warn against overestimating the carrying capacity of the area. The carrying capacity is usually between 0.2 and 1 adult per 100 km² for cheetahs under natural conditions. This is true not only for Namibia, but also for the ecologically very different conditions in the Serengeti ecosystem in East Africa which has a much higher density of prey, they said. The team formulated predictions about the spatial behaviour of cheetahs in their new habitat, identifying controversial issues and hidden core assumptions of the reintroduction plan. These assumptions ignore important aspects of the cheetah socio-spatial system. The researchers noted that male cheetahs follow two different spatial tactics. Territory holders occupy territories consisting of a collection of important communication hotspots. Males without territories (“floaters”) move and live between existing territories, as do females, with occasional forays into territories to access important information at marking sites, they said. “The territories do not border each other, their centers are always about 20 to 23 kilometers apart,” said Jörg Melzheimer from the Cheetah Research Project. “The space between the territories is not defended by any male, it is the living and transit space for floaters and females,” Melzheimer said in a statement. This deeply rooted behaviour will also lead to a system in India with territories about 20 to 23 kilometers apart, according to the researchers. “This distance is independent of the actual size of the territories or the prey base,” said Bettina Wachter from the Cheetah Research Project. “In Namibia, territories are larger and prey density lower, in East Africa territories are smaller and prey density higher—but the distance between territories is a constant and no new territories are established in between. For the reintroduction plan in Kuno National Park, these distances were ignored,” Wachter said. Already with the cheetahs transferred from Namibia in autumn 2022, including three males, the carrying capacity of Kuno National Park has been reached in terms of the cheetahs’ territorial system, the researchers said. “Regardless of the size of their territories established in India, the three Namibian males will have occupied the entire national park, leaving no room for further territories of the additional cheetahs recently transferred from South Africa,” they added. The researchers said there are initial findings that reintroduced cheetahs undertake long forays over an area of several thousand square kilometers in the first few months after translocation. “We therefore predict that cheetahs will most likely be also found far outside the national park and could come into conflict with farmers in the vicinity of the park,” the scientists wrote in their letter. ‘Ecologically unsound’ But some have been questioning the feasibility of reintroducing the cheetah – which went extinct in India in 1962 – even before they were brought in. In October, scientists in an op-ed in Nature Ecology and Evolution called India’s plan “ecologically unsound, costly and may serve as a distraction rather than help global cheetah and other science-based conservation efforts.”

The National Park (KNP) has a core area of 748 sq km and buffer zone of 487 sq km.

While Indian government experts said 21 cheetahs could live within the KNP, others say that area is far too small. Wildlife biologist Ravi Chellam told VOA, “Average cheetah density in the best of the habitats in Africa is 1 per 100 square kilometers. Based on an extrapolation using the density data from Africa, science informs us that seven to eight cheetahs, to a maximum of 10 cheetahs can reside within the 748-square-kilometer KNP,” Chellam said. “With an area of only 748 square kilometers, KNP is just too small to host a viable population — estimated at about 50 adults — of the introduced cheetahs,” Chellam, CEO of Metastring Foundation, an organisation working in the field of environment and public health, said. Bhopal-based journalist Deshdeep Saxena, who writes on wildlife and environment, said the international community of cheetah experts and biologists has always questioned this project for its “unscientific approach". There are issues of lack of space and prey for the African cheetahs in KNP, he claimed. All the 12 cheetahs brought from South Africa were under stress as they were captured nine months ago for translocation and were being confined to small enclosures, he further claimed. They need to be released into the wild, said Saxena, who has written a book on tigers. “In fact, the officials and ground staff linked to the project are also under stress because of the hype surrounding it," he added. He said the issue of cheetahs straying out of the KNP has surfaced when just four of the felines have so far been released into the wild. “What will happen when 14 more cheetahs will be released into the wild?” he wondered. “There is a dire need to develop 4,000 sq km of landscape attached to the KNP for the cheetahs to move around easily, Saxena said. These imported animals were raised in fenced game reserves in the two African countries from where they were brought to KNP. “Their outings pose a threat of man-animal conflict,” he added. But KNP director Uttam Sharma said, “Nobody exactly knows how much space a cheetah needs given the fact that these felines became extinct here seven decades ago. In fact, we are learning about them after their translocation from Namibia and South Africa." A senior state forest official on condition of anonymity said they do not have enough logistical support for the upkeep for the cheetahs, brought in two batches of 8 and 12 felines from Namibia and South Africa respectively since September last year. “We need nine staffers to keep an eye on one cheetah round-the-clock. We don’t have enough hands,” the official told PTI on condition of anonymity. Asked about the space shortage, the official said it was secondary and added that “not just space, we need a lot of logistics.” The MP forest officials said it is not a matter of the two states. “The Centre has a major role to play. We need a note from the Centre to proceed. We desperately need intervention from the Centre. If they don’t take the decision, it will be detrimental to the interest of the cheetah project,” a state forest official said. “We can’t release all the 18 cheetahs into the wild in KNP,” the official added. With inputs from agencies Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook ,  Twitter  and  Instagram .