Kochi: One of the eight African cheetahs that reached Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh from Namibia as part of Project Cheetah was pregnant but lost the embryos possibly due to stress, as per news reports.Earlier, reports had claimed on October 1 that one of the cheetahs was pregnant. However, some state forest officials and scientists with the Wildlife Institute of India (who are overseeing the implementation of the project) had denied these “rumours”.Meanwhile, two cheetahs have been released into a larger, fenced enclosure in Kuno, tweeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the morning of November 6. He added that all eight individuals are “healthy, active and adjusting well”.Cheetah ‘Asha’ was pregnantOn Modi’s 72nd birthday on September 17, eight African cheetahs arrived in India as part of Project Cheetah, a programme that aims to introduce the big cat in India to ‘bring back’ the species to the country. (India was previously home to the Asiatic cheetah but the last of them were hunted down in the 1950s.)Modi had named one of the five females that arrived in India ‘Asha’ (which translates to ‘hope’ in Hindi). This female was pregnant when she was translocated from Namibia to Kuno National Park, but lost the embryos possibly due to stress, a Times of India report quoted the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF), an NGO which sourced the eight cheetahs from Namibia and has been involved in overseeing their health, arrival in India and quarantine, along with the Indian government, as saying, on November 6.Laurie Marker, the founder and executive director of CCF, said that the cheetah was pregnant when the team captured her in Namibia. However, it was “early” and they “assumed” that she aborted due to stress, Marker told TOI. But now, it has been 100 days since her capture from the wild and since the cheetah gestation period is 93 days, it is “safe to say” that she will not have a litter anymore, Marker told TOI.The newspaper had reported on October 1 that one of the female cheetahs, named Asha by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was pregnant. However, while the CCF maintained that it was too early to tell, there was “nothing to support the October 1 media reports” that one of the female cheetahs was pregnant, Madhya Pradesh principal chief conservator of forests J.S. Chauhan had told the New Indian Express on October 3. Both the Madhya Pradesh forest department and scientists with the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) dismissed speculations that Asha was pregnant as being based on “rumours”. Additionally, the CCF did not confirm that any of the five female cats are pregnant, a top Madhya Pradesh forest official had said on October 2.Two cheetahs released into larger enclosureMeanwhile, the Prime Minister tweeted on the morning of November 6 that two cheetahs have been released into a larger enclosure after their mandatory quarantine. He also added that all eight cheetahs were “healthy, active and adjusting well”, in the video tweet which shows two individuals moving around in an enclosure.“Great news! Am told that after the mandatory quarantine, 2 cheetahs have been released to a bigger enclosure for further adaptation to the Kuno habitat. Others will be released soon. I’m also glad to know that all cheetahs are healthy, active and adjusting well,” the tweet read. Great news! Am told that after the mandatory quarantine, 2 cheetahs have been released to a bigger enclosure for further adaptation to the Kuno habitat. Others will be released soon. I’m also glad to know that all cheetahs are healthy, active and adjusting well. 🐆 pic.twitter.com/UeAGcs8YmJ— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) November 6, 2022The other six would be released into the larger enclosures from their quarantines before November 10, but this is dependent on the recommendations given by CCF officials, WII scientists and state forest department experts, an official with the Madhya Pradesh forest department told Hindustan Times on November 6. A senior official with the Cheetah Task Force (which was put together in late September to oversee several aspects of Project Cheetah including their release into enclosures and later into the wild in Kuno) told Hindustan Times that prey species will be introduced here so that the cheetahs can hunt them down. In the quarantine enclosures, authorities have been feeding the big cats buffalo meat.Also Read | Big Deal: Did Namibia Ask India To Pull Its Ivory Ban in Return for Cheetahs?Leopard worry remainsHowever, state forest officials spotted a female leopard within one of the larger enclosures through camera trap images; pugmarks also revealed its presence, reported the Times of India on November 6. This is despite officials having ‘leopard-proofed’ the enclosures by erecting fences around, and removing three leopards from within the enclosures before the cheetahs arrived. Leopards share space with African cheetahs in their native range, but they also prey on cheetahs. They are known to cause 9% of cheetah deaths in South Africa, animal conservationist Vincent van der Merwe, who flew with the eight spotted cats from Namibia to KNP in September, told the news agency PTI. Though cheetahs avoid leopards and sometimes even chase them away, cheetah cubs and sub-adults do fall prey to leopards, he added.A leopard and cheetah staring at each other at a park in Botswana in Southern Africa. Photo: Photo: Jamie Hopf via PTI“The high density of leopards is a matter of concern for cheetahs in KNP. But, two spotted animals have a history of co-existence in South Africa, Namibia and India for centuries,” van der Merwe, who has been given the responsibility to get 12 cheetahs from his home country to India, told PTI. The conservationist manages the Metapopulation Initiative, which offers service to metapopulation reserves in Africa, including identifying cheetahs for swapping or relocating surplus cheetahs to reserves where their population needs to be augmented. He has been managing the population of cheetahs in such reserves in South Africa for the last 11 years.Director of Kuno National Park, Uttam Sharma, told PTI that there are 70-80 leopards in the park. Dean of WII, Y.V. Jhala had earlier told The Wire Science that he does not think leopards in Kuno will be a problem for the African cheetahs because cheetahs live with lions, leopards, spotted hyenas and wild dogs in Africa.