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Showing posts from May, 2023

Cheetah 'Shoot' near Kuno village, Grok Suggests Course Correction

  Villagers shot videos and took pictures with their mobile phones as a coalition of cheetahs attempted to kill a calf on the outskirts of a village located at the edge of Kuno National Park . As the cheetahs pounced on the calf, the villagers yelled and pelted stones at the cheetahs as they ran into the forest. Although the cheetah trackers tried to stop the villagers, they were outnumbered. This incident has raised serious questions, especially at a time when the project is considered to be on the right track after the release of 17 cheetahs into the wild. Critics have once again asked: Are the animals safe? Will Kuno's villages face more cases of human-animal conflict? And the biggest question: Can Kuno support 17 cheetahs and provide enough prey to sustain them? Let's analyze this with the help of Grok , a generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by xAI. Stones Hurled At Cheetahs But first, the real-life drama on the dusty tracks of Sheopur, where Kuno is locate...

Tiger Takes Care of Injured Tigress & Cubs in Bhopal

The sprawling tiger landscape of Bhopal may not have been a designated national park or a sanctuary but the woody city surroundings have been buzzing with wildlife activities, denied and disregarded by the state forest department.  There is a tiger love story  unfolding  in the forest,  a tigress  with four cubs and  reports of  atleast two pregnant tigresses. The tigers are  multiplying on the city outskirts  and so are the worries of the department.    The Love Story A large contiguous forest area spread over about 150 sq square kms in the jungles around two famous dams- Kolar and Kerwa- is now home of atleast 10 adult  felines. They are resident tigers of Bhopal- born and brought up in the city jungle and termed as the urban tigers.  In fact the tiger landscape is spread beyond these two dams   over a vast swathe of forest.  If we  calculate the area from the boundary  of  Ratapani  sa...

Third Cheetah Dies At Kuno National Park

 Twenty four hours after the  Union ministry of environment ,forest and climate change (MoEFC&C)  released an all –is-well report of the cheetahs in enclosures of Kuno National Park , another  cheetah , a female, died in the park. This is the third cheetah death. Interestingly, all three – one from Namibia and two from South Africa- died  even before their release in the open forest of Kuno. South African cheetah deaths have already created uproar back in the African nation as the opposition political parties have questioned the government.  Why Reproduce in Enclosure ?   This is another jolt  to the cheetah introduction programme in India. Eight cheetahs from Namibia  and 12 from South Africa were translocated in the months of September 2022 and February this year  respectively  to Kuno.  A female cheetah named Daksha died due to a "violent interaction" during mating with a coalition of two male cheetahs - Vayu and Ag...