The authorities of the Kuno National Park in India began disciplinary measures against a forest worker who is seen to offer water to a cheetah and his cubs in a video that has become viral online.
The man, a driver of the sanctuary, violated the instructions that say that only authorized staff can approach large cats, said park officials in PTI.
The cheetahs were declared extinct in India in 1952, the only great mammal to disappear since the independence of the country.
They were reintroduced to Kuno in 2022 as part of an ambitious plan to repopulate the species.
The incident turned out on Sunday, when a man’s video fueling water with big cats started to circulate online.
The images show it pouring water into a metal saucepan after being invited to do so by some people who are not seen in the video.
A few moments later, a cheetah named Jwala and his four cubs head for the pan and begin to drink.
The officials say that it is not uncommon for certain staff members to offer water to large cats if they are getting closer to the border of the National Park to attract them to the forest.
The mother and her cubs were in the fields near the border, the main conservative of the Uttam Kumar Sharma forests told PTI.
“The surveillance team, in general, has been responsible for trying to deviation or attracting the cheetahs inside each time such a situation arises so as not to create a human conflict
However, only trained personnel are authorized to do so and the actions of man went against the established protocol, he added.
“There are clear instructions to move away from the cheetahs. Only authorized persons can be near them to perform a specific task,” said Sharma.
Initial reports in the media called The “comforting” video, but many on social networks have raised concerns about the safety of people and animals in such situations. Others have suggested that a better option would be for the authorities to create ponds and bodies of water in the park to make sure that cats did not go far for water during the hot summer.
The villages on the border of the park have been tense while the cheetahs wander in their fields and kill their cattle. Last month, some villagers broke out cats with stones to stop such attacks, the new Indian Express newspaper reported. Civil servants say They tried to raise awareness of the villages so that people adapt to life near animals.
Twenty cheetahs were moved from South Africa and Namibia to Kuno National Park in the central state of Madhya Pradesh between 2022 and 2023 in what was the first intercontinental translocation of this type of great cats.
Eight of them have since died for various reasons, including kidney failure and mating injuries, arousing concerns about whether Kuno conditions suit them.
In 2023, South African and Namibian The experts involved in the project wrote At the Supreme Court of India, claiming that they thought that some of these deaths could have been prevented by “better monitoring of animals and more appropriate and timely veterinary care”.
Experts from Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF), based in Namibia, which have been involved in the project since its creation, had also raised concerns about the holding of inadequate registers in Kuno. They said The BBC according to which the park management had “little or no scientific training” and that the veterinarians were “too inexperienced to manage a project of this caliber”.
The park authorities have rejected the allegations and say that there are now a total of 26 cheetahs, including 17 in the wild and nine others which are kept in enclosures at the moment.
This year, India is expected to receive 20 additional cheetahs from South Africa. Officials say that large cats have already been identified by a working group in collaboration with the South African authorities.
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