MP Wildlife: Learning From Death Of 3 Cheetah Cubs Helps Saving Lives Of 11 Others

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): The Soft Release Bomas (SRB) provided an opportunity to learn about the behaviour of cheetahs, which will be of immense help in their future management in different sites. Female cheetah raising cubs in these semi wild conditions of the SRBs provide great opportunity to learn and document how the cubs are raised, their requirements, health issues in different seasons, growth pattern, eating habits and mother-cub relations etc in Indian conditions.

This has been stated in the newsletter released by Kuno National Park on Saturday.  The newsletter mentioned that learning from the death of three cubs due to extreme heat in May 2023 helped in saving 11 out of 13 cubs born during the 2024 summer.

One of the aspects of learning the mother-cub relationship was managing cubs at the den site. For the initial 45 days, cubs do not go out with mother and remain in the den waiting for their mother to return every time she goes out.

This gives opportunity to have a closer look at the health of cubs and their well being without in any way affecting the mother-cub relationship or human imprinting. This again provided unique experience and knowledge of mother-cub management which cannot be learnt by reading books.

Apart from this, cheetahs have spent most of their time on Indian soil in SRBs. Though these are enclosures, they have prey, mainly Cheetal along with Nilgai and wild boar. There are no co-predators in SRBs. These SRBs size varying from 50 hectare to 153 hectare provides semi-wild conditions i.e can hunt prey but without any competition from co-predators and limited space.

At the same time, most of the cheetahs have experienced the wilderness of Kuno National Park from a few days (Prabhash, Pavak coalition) to several months (Veera). They were in the wild in their country of origin. They have least contact with humans.

“The experience of managing the cheetahs in enclosed space without making them lose their wild trait is new and unique,” the newsletter read. 

Change in water intake

Literature and African experience suggest that Cheetah does not drink water frequently. Maybe once or twice a week. But Indian experience tells a different story. During the summer months (March to June), Cheetahs require water daily and during peak summers may be twice a day. In Indian conditions, unavailability and lack of water intake leads to dehydration which may become fatal for cheetahs.