New Delhi: Forest officials found a young cheetah dead in the forests of Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh on Monday, September 15. Authorities suspect that the 20-month-old sub-adult – one of cheetah Jwala’s cubs that was released in the wild in February this year along with its mother and three siblings – died after a fight with a leopard.According to a press note issued by the field director of Kuno National Park, authorities found the dead cheetah at around 6:30 PM in the forest on September 15. Per the statement, the sub-adult had parted from its mother Jwala more than a month ago, and from its three other siblings a few days ago.“The preliminary cause of the death seems to be a fight with a leopard,” the statement read.A post-mortem report will shed further light on its death, the authorities said.Incidentally, conflicts with leopards is a concern that big cat experts had highlighted would be part of the ongoing Project Cheetah, wherein 20 adult cheetahs were brought to India from Namibia and South Africa in September 2022 and February 2023 to “bring back” the species that had gone extinct in India by the 1950s.Both Y.V. Jhala (former dean of the Wildlife Institute of India) and the late Vincent van der Merwe (director of the Metapopulation Initiative, South Africa), who were associated with the project in its early days had warned that the cheetah population in Kuno could witness losses due to leopards. The leopard density in Kuno was “particularly high” – at nine leopards per 100 sq km – van der Merwe had told Down To Earth in 2022, and that some deaths due to leopards should be anticipated. In Africa, too, where African cheetahs naturally occur, leopards are known to kill cheetahs and their cubs.Per the latest statement, Kuno now has 25 cheetahs. Of these, nine are adults (six females and three males), and the remaining 16 are all Indian-born cubs.