One of the eight cheetahs translocated from Namibia in mid-September last year died of kidney failure at Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh on Monday. The death of the more than four-and-a-half-year old female feline Sasha is being seen as a setback to Project Cheetah, aimed at reviving the population of the world’s fastest land animal in India, seven decades after they became extinct.
Sasha was suffering from a kidney ailment even before her translocation from Namibia, said Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (PCCF-Wildlife) JS Chauhan.
“A monitoring team found Sasha lazy on March 22, following which they decided to take her to a quarantine enclosure for treatment,” he said.
Her blood sample was collected the same day and examined. A wildlife expert armed with a portable ultrasound machine went inside the KNP to examine the ailing cheetah and it was found that Sasha’s kidneys were infected, said Chauhan.
Later, senior Wildlife Institute of India (WII) scientists and KNP management contacted the Cheetah Conservation Fund, Namibia, to know the treatment history of Sasha.
They found that in her last blood sample, collected on August 15, 2022, the animal’s creatinine level was 400 (an indicator of poor kidney function), he said.
Namibian wildlife experts and KNP veterinary doctors worked hard day and night to cure Sasha, but the animal did not survive, the forest official said. The seven other cheetahs are doing well. Among these seven, three male and a female were released in the park’s open forest area and they are “totally healthy, active and hunting in a normal manner”, the statement said.
Twelve cheetahs brought to the KNP from South Africa last month are at present housed in a quarantine enclosure and they are healthy and active, it added. The eight Namibian cheetahs --- five female and three male --- were released into their enclosures at the KNP on September 17 at an event attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The last cheetah died in India in Koriya district of present-day Chhattisgarh in 1947 and the fastest land animal was declared extinct in the country in 1952.
