‘Sasha’: Cheetah brought from Namibia dies

One of the eight cheetahs introduced in the Kuno National Park last year from Namibia, died on Monday. Named Sasha, she was suffering from a kidney ailment.

On January 23, Sasha showed signs of fatigue and weakness, after which she was tranquilised and shifted to the quarantine enclosure for treatment.

Sasha was three years old and was released at Kuno on September 17 last year as part of India’s cheetah reintroduction programme.

In the initial days, all cheetahs were kept under observation in quarantine. They were released into larger hunting enclosures in November. The cheetahs have since hunted on their own and shown signs of adapting to their new home.

Last month too, 12 cheetahs had been brought to India from South Africa on Friday for India as part of an initiative to expand the cheetah meta-population and to reintroduce cheetahs to a former range state following their local extinction due to over hunting and loss of habitat in the last century.

Earlier this year, the governments of South Africa and India signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Cooperation on the Re-introduction of Cheetah to India.  The MoU facilitates cooperation between the two countries to establish a viable and secure cheetah population in India; promotes conservation and ensures that expertise is shared and exchanged, and capacity built, to promote cheetah conservation. This includes human-wildlife conflict resolution, capture and translocation of wildlife and community participation in conservation in the two countries. 

Conservation translocations have become a common practice to conserve species and restore ecosystems. South Africa plays an active role in providing founders for the population and range expansion of iconic species such as cheetahs.