Wildlife authorities are expected to carry out the exercise after it was noted that the male coalition of the Cheetahs brothers from Namibia, Gaurav and Shaurya, also referred to as “The Rock Stars”, have started showing a “similar problem”.
Following the deaths of two cheetahs in three days, wildlife officials in Madhya Pradesh have advised several actions, including an exercise to remove radio collars from 10 free-ranging cheetahs in Kuno National Park.
On the other side, the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) stated on Sunday that “all mortalities are due to natural causes” and that allegations of cheetah fatalities from radio collars were unsupported by scientific data.
Madhya Pradesh’s principal chief conservator of forests (wildlife) J S Chauhan said “We have a meeting on this issue tomorrow. An infection breaking out because of the radio collar due to the monsoon is possible. because of high moisture, the cheetah may scratch its skin, which can break and an infection can break out after contact with a fly. It may also be one of the reasons for the cheetah deaths. We need a thorough examination to see if there are other causes. Both the cheetahs have similar organ damage — their kidneys, heart, spleen and kidneys were damaged. The radio collar is not the fatal issue, it can be a contributing factor and it must be addressed.”
Of the 20 animals translocated from Africa, five have died since they were first introduced in September 2022 in two batches. Eleven of the animals have since been released into the wild, while four are in one square-km enclosure called bomas, where they are in conditions similar to captivity.
Fatal infection
The trigger for the recall was the latest fatality; a cheetah named Surya died from a wound on its neck that was then infected with maggots. The larvae of the maggots were also found on the radio collar and this fatally infected the animal.
Whether the wound was due to abrasion from the collars abetting a parasitic infection is a matter of dispute, with officials saying that India’s long history of radio-collaring tigers, leopards and now cheetahs, has never shown such infections.
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