NO COUNTRY FOR CHEETAHS?

As cheetahs brought to India continue to die, international experts feel the situation is alarming; authorities say it will get better

- SRAVANI SARKAR

EIGHT SEEMS TO be a recurring number for India’s ambitious Project Cheetah, and it does not bode too well for the big cats. 

Eight months after the moment of pride and celebration when the first batch of eight cheetahs from Namibia was released in Kuno National Park (KNP) in Madhya Pradesh, the mood has turned sombre with eight of the 24 wildcats dying in the past three and a half months. South African expert Dr Adrian Tordiffe, who is associated closely with the project, said the frequency of the deaths at Kuno was alarming.

Speaking exclusively with THE WEEK, Tordiffe, the top name on the consulting panel of international cheetah experts linked to the Cheetah Project Steering Committee, cautioned that if the situation related to deaths was not turned around, Project Cheetah could be in jeopardy as the South African government might decide against sending more big cats to India. Rajesh Gopal, chairman of the steering committee, however, said such mortalities were expected in the initial phase of the intercontinental translocation project. The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), which is the project implementation agency, too, was against the “premature conclusion on the success or failure of the project as it has not completed even one year”.

Project Cheetah was launched on September 17, 2022, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi released eight cheetahs from Namibia into KNP, 70 years after the sleek cats were declared extinct in India. On February 18, 12 more from South Africa were flown in. Tordiffe, veterinary wildlife specialist from the University of Pretoria, had accompanied both the Namibian and the South African cheetahs to Kuno.