MP: Kuno Loses A Female Cheetah To Injuries, Count Of Big Cat Down To 26

Bhopal: Nabha, the eight-year-old Namibian cheetah in the Kuno national park (KNP) in Madhya Pradesh on Saturday succumbed to injuries that she had sustained while hunting. She had been under treatment for a week for her injuries, KNP field director Uttam Kumar Sharma told this newspaper.

“Nabha got badly injured a week back probably during a hunting attempt inside her soft release boma (large enclosure). She had fractures in both ulna (bone in the foreleg) and fibula (smaller of the two outer bones between knee and ankle) on the left side along with other injuries. Further details will be known after the postmortem report is received,” Sharma said.

With her death, Kuno is now left with 26 cheetahs — nine adults (six males and three females) — and 17 cubs born in the park. “All of them are healthy and doing well,” Sharma said.

He said 16 were in the wild and doing very well. They have adapted well to the habitat of the KNP, have learned to live with co-predators and are regularly hunting, he said.

Two male cheetahs, Agni and Vayu, have recently been shifted to the Gandhisagar wildlife sanctuary under Mandsaur district in Madhya Pradesh from the KNP and they are also doing well, Sharma said.

Incidentally, Nabha was one of the two adult female cheetahs in the KNP which were yet to bear cubs. The other female cheetah which was yet to become mother is Dheera, from South Africa.

The remaining five adult female cheetahs in the KNP have yielded cubs in one or multiple litters. The cheetah mothers in Kuno are Veera, Jwala, Aasha, Gamini and Nirva.

Twenty cheetahs were brought from Namibia and South Africa in a gap of six months to the KNP in September 2022- February 2023 under the cheetah reintroduction project of the country.

Some of them have perished due to various reasons while some female cheetahs have yielded cubs.