Another big cat that was released under the cheetah reintroduction project in Kuno National Park died on Tuesday. The cheetah, named Tejas, died of injuries to his neck. Tejas is the seventh cheetah to die at the KNP in three months. Earlier in May, two cubs had died of intense hot weather as they were weak after birth. Their mother Jwala, earlier known as Siyaya, was brought from Namibia to KNP in Sheopur district in September 2022. She gave birth to four cubs in the last week of March this year.
Jwala's first cub had also died of weakness.
Cheetahs were reintroduced in India, 70 years after the species was declared extinct. One of the Namibian cheetahs, Sasha, succumbed to a kidney-related ailment on March 27, while another cheetah, Uday, from South Africa, died on April 13.
Daksha, a cheetah brought from South Africa, died of injuries following a violent interaction with a male during a mating attempt on May 9. Jwala's four cubs were born in the wild on Indian soil after the last cheetah was hunted in the Korea district of present-day Chhattisgarh in 1947.
Tejas died of serious injuries to his neck that he sustained in a fight with a female cheetah. Experts were called in but the big cat died by 2 pm. The cheetah's death came two days after the release of two more cheetahs at KNP.
Two more male cheetahs, identified as Prabhash and Pavak, were released into the free-range wild at the Kuno National Park (KNP) in Madhya Pradesh's Sheopur district on Monday, said Sheopur's Divisional Forest Officer P K Verma on Tuesday. With this, the total count of cheetahs in the free-range increases to 12. Other five felines and a cub are currently in the enclosures. The senior official also said both of them, including eight Namibian cheetahs, comprising five females and three males, were brought to India from South Africa in February this year.