Authorities in India’s Kuno National Park have started disciplinary action against a forest worker who is seen offering water to a cheetah and her cubs in a video that has gone viral online.
The man, a driver at the sanctuary, violated instructions which say only authorised personnel can go near the big cats, park officials told PTI news agency.
Cheetahs were declared extinct in India in 1952, the only large mammal to become extinct since the country’s independence.
They were reintroduced in Kuno in 2022 as part of an ambitious plan to repopulate the species.
The incident came to light on Sunday, when a video of the man feeding water to the big cats began circulating online.
The footage shows him pouring water into a metal pan after being urged to do so by some people who aren’t seen in the video.
Moments later, a cheetah named Jwala and her four cubs walk up to the pan and start drinking from it.
Officials say it’s not uncommon for certain staff members to offer water to big cats if they get close to the boundary of the national park to lure them back into the forest.
The mum and her cubs were in the fields close to the boundary, Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests Uttam Kumar Sharma told PTI.
“The monitoring team, in general, has been instructed to try to deviate or lure the cheetahs back inside whenever such a situation arises so as not to create human-cheetah conflict,” he said
However, only trained personnel are allowed to do so and the man’s actions went against established protocol, he added.
“There are clear instructions to move away from cheetahs. Only authorised persons can go in close proximity to them to perform a specific task,” Mr Sharma said.
Initial reports in the media called the video “heartwarming” but many on social media raised concerns about the safety of people and animals in such situations. Others suggested a better option would be for the authorities to create ponds and water bodies in the park to ensure the cats did not have to go far for water in the hot summer.
Villages on the park’s border have been tense as cheetahs wander into their fields and kill their livestock. Last month, some villagers pelted the cats with stones to stop such attacks, The New Indian Express newspaper reported. Officials say they have been trying to raise awareness in the villages so that people adapt to living near the animals.
Twenty cheetahs were relocated from South Africa and Namibia to the Kuno national park in the central state of Madhya Pradesh between 2022 and 2023 in what was the first such intercontinental translocation of the big cats.
Eight of them have since died due to various reasons, including kidney failure and mating injuries, sparking concerns about whether conditions at Kuno are suitable for them.
In 2023, South African and Namibian experts involved with the project wrote to India’s Supreme Court, saying they believed that some of these deaths could have been prevented by “better monitoring of animals and more appropriate and timely veterinary care”.
Experts from the Namibia-based Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF), which has been involved with the project since its inception, had also raised concerns about inadequate record-keeping at Kuno. They told the BBC that the park management had “little or no scientific training” and the vets were “too inexperienced to manage a project of this calibre”.
Park authorities have rejected the allegations and say there are now a total of 26 cheetahs, including 17 in the wild and nine others that are kept in enclosures at the moment.
This year, India is expected to receive 20 more cheetahs from South Africa. Officials say the big cats have already been identified by a task force in collaboration with South African authorities.
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