New Delhi: India’s African cheetahs are back in the news — and this time, it’s another death.On June 4, park authorities found a cheetah cub born on Indian soil dead in its enclosure in Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno, as per a report by the PTI.The news report quoted an official statement on June 4 that said that authorities found the cub lying lifeless next to its mother Gamini – one of the 12 cheetahs brought in from South Africa in February 2023 – when they were conducting a routine inspection. According to the statement accessed by the PTI, a team of veterinarians found the dead cub at around 4 pm on June 4. Per authorities, the cause for death can be ascertained only after a post-mortem. The cub was nearly three months old.On March 18, Union environment minister Bhupender Yadav had tweeted the birth of a litter of the six cubs born to cheetah Gamini. The litter, born on March 10, took India’s cheetah cub tally (the number of cubs born to the African cheetahs in India) to 14.The cub is now the 11th cheetah to die in Kuno, and the fourth cub to die in the National Park. Three cubs (born in the first ever cheetah litter in India) had died in May last year due to “heat stress”, as per official records, at less than two months of age.Currently, Kuno is home to 26 cheetahs and 13 cubs, as part of Project Cheetah, the second Modi government’s ambitious cheetah reintroduction programme that kicked off in September 2022 with the arrival of the first batch of eight adult African cheetahs from Namibia. A male from this batch named Shaurya (aka Freddie) was the last cheetah to die in the Park, on January 16 this year.
