Seven months after she was brought from her home country Namibia to India in one of the biggest inter-continental cheetah translocations, the female cat ‘Sasha’ died on Monday.
The feline was part of the batch of eight cheetahs released into the Kuno National Park by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year.
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In a statement, the government of Madhya Pradesh said the cat succumbed to a kidney infection.
According to the authorities, Sasha was found slightly torpid by the monitoring team on January 22. She was then examined by a team of three veterinarians who have been specially deputed to take care of the animals. One of the officials had also told News18, that the cat has a narrow recovery post her first bout of infection in January.
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“Her blood samples were taken, and she was diagnosed with a kidney ailment, which worsened over the next few weeks,” read the statement.
The cat had some health issues even before she was translocated to India. “On examination, we found that her blood sample last taken in Namibia also showed high levels of creatinine, which indicates an early kidney issue,” the government informed.
Sasha was among the eight cheetahs who were brought from Namibia on September 17 in a 24-hour transcontinental journey in a jumbo jet especially modified for the purpose, followed by a 30-minute helicopter journey to Kuno.
The historic exercise was part of India’s ambition to restore the population of cheetahs in India almost seventy years after they went extinct. The animals though belong to a different sub-species than the Asiatic Cheetahs that the country once had.
Ever since they were translocated, the five female and three male cats have remained within the safe limits of the ‘bomas’ (predator-proof enclosures) specially created for them in the national park. Earlier this month, all of them except Sasha were released into the wild.
In a statement, Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) said that the 5.5-year-old Sasha was found on a farm by some of the farm workers in late 2017. She was skinny and malnourished. The workers nursed her back to health. In January 2018, CCF staff learned about Sasha and moved her to the CCF Centre lands, which include a large, integrated, livestock model farm and wildlife reserve.
Sasha was living together with another female Savanahh cat in the big hunting boma at Kuno National Park awaiting release, whom she had befriended in Namibia.
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“Sadly, Sasha succumbed to renal failure. She was under the care of Project Cheetah veterinarians for a few months, so this was not unexpected. Kidney disease and renal failure are a problem for all cats, but this can be especially bad for cheetahs, which are by nature delicate creatures,” said Dr Laurie Marker, Founder and Executive Director for Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF).
As per park officials, the rest of the cheetahs including those brought from Africa last month have been doing well. However, there has not been any interaction between the cats from Namibia and South Africa yet.
Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav had earlier told the media in February that Sasha was an orphan who was rescued by the Cheetah Conservation Fund and was operated upon before she was brought to India.
