Namibian cheetah gives birth to 4 cubs at MP’s Kuno National Park
Madhya Pradesh,Mar 29 : One of the Namibian cheetahs has given birth to four cubs at the Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh.
The development comes three days after one of the cheetahs, Sasha, died due to a kidney ailment.
The information regarding the birth of cubs was shared by Union Minister Bhupender Yadav, who also shared the pictures of the cubs on Twitter.
Sasha, along with seven other big cats, was translocated to Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park (KNP) from the African country.
The death of the more than four-and-a-half years old female feline came 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.
Eight cheetahs were brought from Namibia in mid-September last year and housed in the KNP in the Sheopur district.
Cheetahs seen in the wild in India after 70 years at Kuno National Park
The seven other cheetahs are doing well. Among these seven, three males and a female were released in the park’s open forest area and they are “totally healthy, active and hunting in a normal manner”, Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (PCCF-Wildlife) JS Chauhan said in a statement.
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, an official told PTI.
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 the Koriya district of present-day Chhattisgarh in 1947 and the fastest land animal was declared extinct in the country in 1952.
-The India Today
