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Showing posts from February, 2023

Future Tense For Cute Cheetah Cubs of Kuno

  Kuno National park released two short documentaries with beautiful pictures of cheetah cubs and their mothers.The cute cheetah cubs in the moving pictures  attract eyeballs. Cheetah siblings playing in the lush green grasslands after monsoon in Kuno fascinate all and sundry. For record, in the last 24 months, the same number of cheetahs survived- 12 adult cheetahs of the original 20 airlifted from Africa – Namibia and South Africa- and 12 of the 17 cubs born in Kuno. As the Union ministry of Environment ,Forest  and Climate Change (MoEFC&C) celebrates the “two successful years of the cheetah project in Kuno”, lo and behold, all the cheetahs are still in captivity and none of them are free ranging so far.What  is the future of these cubs . Their future  is  linked with the  future of  the cheetah project.  Safe in Boma, Cubs Yet to Face Jungle Threats The documentaries showcase  playful  cheetah cubs in Kuno. The first cheetah cubs  were born in Kuno in March 2023 when a Nambian

How would Cheetahs in Kuno Meet and Mate ?

Female cheetah and cubs.Even this picture  released by India's Press Information Bureaue says something. Eversince cheetah introduction in Kuno national park , officials are  dreaming for this day. But a section of these officials  also believe that  these cats continue to live under stress  and there is an uncertainty over breeding. They need to meet and mate. But how ? Will they be able to do so  as they are going to follow many more months of  stress when they are released in open. Now that the Namibian cheetahs are ready  for release in the open forest from the closed confines of the  present 5 square km fenced housing, many in the cheetah monitoring team are concerned over the future of their reproduction- an important land mark in cheetah conservation and the ultimate aim of the introduction of the foreign species of the cat in India. From Namibia to India , to small  enclosure  in Kuno to the five sq km boma, they will  again be under stress  when released in the open jungle

Teeming With Tigers, India Needs To Manage Their Population

India is facing a serious 'problem of plenty'. Rising tiger population in many parts of the country is creating conflict zones. And the tiger- human clashes are going up, alarmingly in many landscapes. The Union ministry of environment, forest and climate change (MoEFCC) needs to take initiatives to control the situation. Fifty years after the project tiger as India moves on from dwindling tiger population to surplus numbers of the big cats,  the nation needs an active tiger population management plan. As MoEFC&C yet to  become proactive, a team of  tiger catchers continue to carry out search operations for the past over five months to  capture a tigress with four cubs. The team members are  scanning Tadoba Andhari Tiger Landscape in Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, grappling with the issue of over population of 250 tigers. As many as 53 people lost their lives in Chandrapur in 2022 in tiger attacks while 14 tigers have also died from January 2022 to January this year. This