Guy Fawkes Day witnessed the commemoration of a wildlife-oriented strategy in the heart of India. On November 5, a spirit of celebration emanated from Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh, with the release of two males among the eight African cheetahs from the quarantine zone into a larger enclosure. These felines from Namibia had been released by the prime minister, Narendra Modi, on his birthday, September 17. “Great news! Am told that after the mandatory quarantine, 2 cheetahs have been released to a bigger enclosure for further adaptation to the Kuno habitat. Others will be released soon. I’m also glad to know that all cheetahs are healthy, active and adjusting well,” Modi tweeted recently.

To add to this sense of jubilation, on November 11, these siblings made a second kill, the first being a spotted deer four days earlier. All this is being meticulously monitored by four Namibian experts and a nine-member task force that includes a scientist from the Wildlife Institute of India. Kuno was initially envisaged as an additional territory for the Asiatic lions that inhabit the National Park at Sasangir. When the Gujarat government decided not to part with its prized tourist lures (although the relocation of lions to Kuno could have been far smoother), the idea of experimenting with cheetahs came to the fore.

Wildlife experts and enthusiasts have voiced their apprehensions about the cheetahs being released at Kuno. According to the animal conservationist, Vincent van der Merwe, who manages the cheetah population in South Africa, the high density of leopards in Madhya Pradesh (the highest in the country, at 3,421), particularly at Kuno, is a matter of concern. In Africa, leopards are known to attack cheetahs, the fastest land animal, he added. The director of Kuno, Uttam Sharma, put the leopard count in that sanctuary at around 80, each adult weighing around 60 kgs, compared to the cheetah which weighs between 40 and 50 kgs. Although the cheetah acclimatisation zone was cleared of leopards, camera-trap images and pugmarks indicated leopard presence in one of the larger cheetah enclosures quite recently.

In a letter published in Nature Ecology and Evolution last month, eight wildlife scientists cautioned against space constraints. A single cheetah is said to require territory of 100 sq kms, whereas the total area of the Kuno National Park is 748 sq kms. They apprehend that the cheetahs could venture out and endanger livestock and villagers in the forest buffer zone. This dream project, conceived by the Union environment ministry, is likely to see the cheetahs, one of whom was named Asha by Modi to signify hope, rise in number. According to reports quoting Laurie Marker, the founder and executive director of Cheetah Conservation Fund, Asha was pregnant when she arrived but miscarried last month “because of stress.” Although this contention was dismissed as a rumour, the translocation and an entirely alien habitat is bound to prove a challenge even for the most resilient species. Asha and her companions, Elton, Freddy, Siyaya, Obaan, Tbilisi, Savannah and Sasha, have spawned misgivings among researchers and wildlife experts, neutralising the euphoria over Elton and Freddy making kills.

Does any animal translocation project deserve such hype? In his Mann ki Baat address shortly after the release of the cheetahs, Modi had exhorted the country’s population to find ‘desi’ names for the cheetahs! “By what name should each of them be called? The winner may even get a chance to be the first to have a glimpse of these cheetahs inside Kuno,” he said. While the prized species acclimatises and adapts to their Indian names, one wonders if their documents carry the photo that adorns the Covid-19 certificates of crores of vaccinated Indians. With a conservation tagline perhaps?