Three male cheetahs in the Kuno National Park have been moved into quarantine enclosures, the Madhya Pradesh wildlife department said on Wednesday but did not disclose why they were shifted.

A male cheetah named Pavan (Oban) has been in quarantine since July 14 and Gaurav (Elton) and Shaurya (Freddy) were moved into the enclosure on Wednesday, the state’s wildlife department said in a media release. All three cheetahs are healthy, it said.

Two conservation experts involved in the cheetah introduction project said all the three cheetahs had lesions under their neck collars, some mild some moderate. They are expected to recover after removal of the collars and treatment and keeping them in quarantine is standard protocol, they said.

Two male cheetahs had died in Kuno last week from what veterinarians suspect was septicemia (blood poisoning) caused by bacteria infections that had resulted from fly larvae feeding into lesions near their collars and causing wounds.

Wildlife authorities, concerned by the deaths and the unusual nature of the wounds, decided earlier this week to medically evaluate all cheetahs in Kuno. Before Pavan, Gaurav and Shaurya were moved into quarantine, Kuno had 11 cheetahs in free-ranging (open wild) conditions and five, including a cub born in Kuno earlier this year, were within fenced quarantine enclosures.

The Union environment ministry had brought eight cheetahs from Namibia and 12 from South Africa for the project that seeks to establish clusters of wild cheetah populations at several sites across India. Five of the 20 cheetahs from Africa and three of the four cubs born in India have died since March.

Wildlife biologists and project officials have asserted that the deaths, while unfortunate, should not be viewed as setbacks to the project’s goals. The cheetah project document had defined even a 50 per cent mortality in the first year as a signal of success.