Early Tuesday morning ( August 12) , the sleepy village of Karira in Rajasthan’s Sawai Madhopur district found itself at the centre of an unusual wildlife drama. Nestled in the buffer zone of Ranthambhore National Park, the village is used to the occasional leopard sighting or tiger rumor, but this time the visitor was an animal none of the villagers had ever seen up close — a cheetah. And not just any cheetah. This was Jwala, a radio-collared female brought from Namibia last year and currently part of India’s ambitious cheetah introduction project at Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh. Somehow, she had strayed nearly 180 kilometres from her designated home and ended up in the heart of rural Rajasthan. Cheetah in the Village The first hints of trouble came at dawn, when villagers awoke to find goats bleating unusually as if sounding alert .The villagers were terrified after they spotted an animal — much slimmer than a leopard, with tear-like markings down its face — had been seen i...
Two years ago, two wild tigers were relocated from Madhya Pradesh to Odisha under India’s maiden interstate -tiger translocation programme which failed miserably. The two big cats were shifted to Satkosia tiger reserve in Odisha after its tiger population plummeted from 11 in 2004 to 2 in 2014. One of the big cats Mahavir sent from MP was reportedly killed by poachers while Sundari, the tigress, accused of killing two persons, landed behind barbed wires in a small enclosure raising questions over the wildlife management in the country. Many wildlife experts in India feel that the Satkosia fiasco should be probed and the people responsible for the plight of the national animal should be held accountable. Condemned to Captivity Before Sundari was condemned to captivity in Ghorela enclosure in Mukki range of of Kanha National park, the tigress had already spent an agonizing period of 28 months in cap...