Leopard attack suspected in deaths of four cheetah cubs at Kuno National Park: Officials

Four-month-old cheetah cubs at Kuno National Park were found dead, likely killed by a leopard, officials said. The incident raises concerns over interspecies conflict in India’s cheetah reintroduction programme, which continues despite ongoing ecological challenges

Sheopur: Four month-old cheetah cubs recently found dead near Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh’s Sheopur district were suspected to have been killed by a leopard, an official said on Thursday.

The cubs, born to cheetah KGP12 on April 11, were found dead on Tuesday in the Sheopur territorial division outside the protected forest, with their bodies partially eaten.

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“A leopard most likely killed them. I cannot say with 100 per cent certainty that a leopard killed the cubs until the post-mortem report is out. But based on the pattern of the attack and the feeding, it was most probably a leopard,” Cheetah Project director Uttam Sharma said.

The mother cheetah is safe and healthy, the official said.

According to another official, the leopard population at Kuno National Park exceeds 150. The park’s core and buffer areas together are spread across 1,777 sq km.

Experts had earlier expressed apprehension about possible conflicts between leopards and cheetahs in the national park. At the same time, they had also noted that the two cat species had co-existed in India historically.

With the deaths of the four cubs, Kuno now has 50 cheetahs, including 33 Indian-born individuals, in addition to three cheetahs at Gandhi Sagar Sanctuary.

“All the remaining cheetahs are healthy and doing well,” Sharma added.

After cheetahs became extinct in India seven decades ago, the country launched an intercontinental programme in September 2022 to revive their population.

Under the project, eight cheetahs were brought from Namibia in September 2022, followed by 12 from South Africa in February 2023. A third batch of nine cheetahs arrived from Botswana on February 28 this year.