The cheetah casualty count at Kuno National Park has gone up to nine. Six of the dead animals, including Dhatri who breathed her last on Wednesday, had been relocated to the protected area in Madhya Pradesh from Namibia and South Africa in an ambitious programme that began in September last year. The park has also lost three cheetah cubs. The re-introduction of the big cat is a long-term project and 11 months is too early to pass judgment on Project Cheetah. The high mortality rate of the animal in its new home is, however, worrying. More so, because South African cheetah specialists — they were roped into the steering committee of the translocation programme — have raised serious concerns about the project’s implementation in a letter to the Supreme Court. A report in this newspaper has revealed that in the letter, dated July 15, the wildlife biologists accused the government of keeping them in the dark about the health of the animals. The government’s claim that the scientists have since dissociated themselves from the letter doesn’t appear convincing, given that the young project has invited allegations of giving short shrift to expert opinion from other quarters as well.
Cheetahs were officially declared extinct in India in 1952. In the 1970s the Indira Gandhi government opened negotiations with Iran for bringing Persian cheetahs to India in exchange for Asiatic lions. But the move could not take off. The relocation project was revived in 2009 by the UPA government, only to be nipped in the bud by the SC which reasoned “that a detailed scientific study should be conducted before the introduction of a foreign species”. In 2020, the apex court modified its order and allowed the government to commence Project Cheetah on a trial basis, reiterating that the endeavour should be moored in “scientific understanding”. However, it appears that the government has not always given due importance to this guideline. In October last year, this paper reported that wildlife biologist YV Jhala, at the forefront of the cheetah project for more than a decade, and who escorted the first batch of the animals from Namibia, did not find a place in the government’s new Cheetah Task Force. The South African scientists have alleged the programme’s current management has “little or no scientific training” and foreign experts “have become mere window dressing”. They have claimed that some of the deaths could have been prevented with “more appropriate veterinary care”. Less than a week after the wildlife biologists expressed their worries, the SC admonished the government and said that a 40 per cent fatality in less than a year “does not reflect a good picture”.