Cheetah Shasha dies due to kidney ailment in MP's Kuno National Park

The five-and-a-half year old female cheetah was among the eight cheetahs translocated from Namibia and housed in the KNP in Sheopur district since September 2022

One of the eight Namibian cheetahs brought last year to create a cheetah population in India, died on Monday due to renal infection after almost two months of illness.

The five-and-half-year-old female big cat named Shasha was reported sick in January third week following which she was treated by veterinarians who consulted scientists from Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun as well as experts from Namibia and South Africa to decide on the course of treatment.

The Madhya Pradesh forest department said Shasha had a kidney ailment much before she landed in India in a special flight from Windhoek as a blood test carried out in August 2022 showed a very high level of creatinine. The first batch of eight cheetahs including Shasha arrived a month later.

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A medical team from Vani Vilas national park in Bhopal with portable ultrasound machine was also sent to Kuno, 350 km away for her treatment, but it was of no avail.

Out of the remaining seven African cheetahs from the first batch - three males and one female - have been released in the wild of Kuno national park, while the remaining three are still in a large restrictive territory where they can hunt. The 12 South African cheetahs are also in the same zone.

Experts said such deaths were not uncommon with cheetahs who are delicate creatures and the Indian programme took into account such possibilities while designing the trans-continental shift of the cats.

The fifth Namibian cheetah, according to sources, might also be released in the wild in near future, but the remaining two would not be because they had limited experience in the wild and were less fearful of humans as they grew up close to human settlements.

Nevertheless, the two animals were still brought to India on the ground that they could be used for mating in a fenced breeding area.

However, the Union Environment Ministry is yet to set up the second cheetah site at Mukundara hills where the Rajasthan government offered to host the animals in an 80 sq km fenced forest. “We are not in a hurry with Mukundara hills. Let the population at Kuno stabilise first,” a top ministry official told DH.