Four cheers at MP’s Kuno park; cheetah Neerva gives birth to cub quartet

PTI, Nov 25, 2024, 8:00 PM IST

Bhopal: Cheetah Neerva has given birth to four cubs at the Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh’s Sheopur district, Chief Minister Mohan Yadav said on Monday and hailed their arrival as a boost to the project that restored a species which vanished from India decades ago.

Prior to this, 17 cheetah cubs had been born at the KNP, where the fastest land animal on Earth was translocated from Namibia more than two years ago. With 12 of those cubs surviving, the count of cheetahs was last reported to be 24. With the birth of four more cubs, their count has gone up to 16.

“Today the Cheetah Project has achieved great success. In Kuno National Park of our – Cheetah State Madhya Pradesh – the female cheetah Neerva has given birth to four cubs, which is a great achievement not only for the state but also for the country,” Yadav stated in a post on X in the evening.

He lauded forest department personnel involved in the Cheetah Project for their efforts in making the programme a success.

In the afternoon, the forest department had informed about the birth of cheetah cubs at the KNP without specifying their exact number.

“Good news from Kuno. Female cheetah Neerva has given birth to cubs in Kuno National Park located in Sheopur district,” the MP forest department said in a post on X.

Last month, Chief Minister Yadav had shared information that a female cheetah at the park was pregnant and was expected to deliver cubs soon.

On September 17, 2022, Prime Minister Narendra Modi released eight Namibian cheetahs – five females and three males – into enclosures at the KNP as part of the world’s first intercontinental translocation of the big cats, seven decades after they became extinct in India due to hunting and habitat loss.

In February 2023, a dozen more cheetahs were translocated to the national park from South Africa as part of the central government’s project to reintroduce the big cats in the country.