A Namibian cheetah has ventured outside the Kuno National Park, Madhya Pradesh, and approached villages twice over the past three days, rekindling concerns among some wildlife scientists that India rushed into the cheetah introduction project without sufficient space.

The cheetah named Oban, released from a fenced enclosure into the wild in Kuno last month, moved outside the park’s designated area on Sunday and Monday and forest and wildlife staff have scrambled to coax the animal back into Kuno, an expert monitoring the project said.

Eight wildlife scientists had last year expressed concern that India’s project to introduce wild cheetah populations is based on an “unsubstantiated claim” that the country has sufficient space for cheetahs. Some of them now say Oban’s excursions underscore their concerns.

Oban is one of four cheetahs among the eight that arrived from Namibia last September to be released into the open wild. Three cheetahs from Namibia and 12 flown in from South Africa earlier this year are in fenced or quarantine enclosures. One cheetah from Namibia died from kidney disorder.

“With only four cheetahs released, it is already proving to be an extremely challenging situation to manage," said Ravi Chellam, a wildlife biologist and chief executive officer with Metastring Foundation, a private not-for-profit entity engaged in data and technology. "One can imagine the scale of challenges as more cheetahs are released."

“We’ve been saying for more than a year that cheetahs need far more space than other large cats,” said Chellam, who was one of the eight scientists who had expressed their concerns about paucity of space in the research journal Nature Ecology and Evolution last October.

A Press Trust of India report from Sheopur, Madhya Pradesh, on Tuesday morning quoted a forest official as saying the cheetah “continued to move close to a village in the vicinity” and was seen drinking from the Kwari river that flows through Sheopur.

Conservation scientists say the cheetah’s movements outside the park are neither unexpected nor should they be viewed as an animal “straying” into unauthorised territory. All movements of wild animals are governed by their needs for resources such as food, water, mates, shelter, or territory.

“Post-release, cheetahs are known to show lots of movement, exploring their new environment,” said Susan Yannetti, senior adviser, strategic initiatives at the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF), a non-government organisation that facilitated the transfer of eight cheetahs from Namibia to India.

“The released animals must learn where suitable habitat is and must learn areas like villages that are less favourable,” Yannetti said. “We hope with enough time, these animals will establish home ranges within Kuno and rarely venture out into human-dominated landscapes.”

Forest officials and staff from the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, and the CCF are tracking the cheetahs through satellite-linked radio collars and have observed Oban going in and out of the park over the past three days.

“If he does not return to the forests of Kuno, our last resort will be to recapture Oban with anaesthesia and return him to the core of the park,” said Eli Walker, conservation biologist and cheetah specialist with the CCF.

The CCF, which is providing technical assistance to the cheetah monitoring team, said Oban appeared heading towards Kuno on Tuesday evening, although still outside its bounds and the tracking team is hoping it won’t have to adopt the last resort.

Given cheetahs’ need for vast spaces, the larger the number of cheetahs released into Kuno, the greater will be the probability that some of them might venture out, said Abi Vanak, a professor at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment, Bangalore, who’s also among the eight scientists.

“We’re not opposed to the experiment to introduce cheetahs, our concerns are that they’ve put the cart before the horse,” Vanak said. The cheetah project, he said, should have been ideally preceded by a plan to secure vast grassland areas that cheetahs would require.

Chellam said cheetahs need much more space than other large cats. Cheetah densities are estimated to be about one per 100sqkm in the best of their habitats. Lions, leopards and tigers exist in much higher densities ranging from five to even higher than 15 per 100sqkm.

But a CCF spokesperson said Oban’s excursions “do not correlate with the capacity of Kuno”. Project scientists have estimated that Kuno has a carrying capacity of 21 cheetahs and only four are so far in the open wild.