Villagers shot videos and took pictures with their mobile phones as a coalition of cheetahs attempted to kill a calf on the outskirts of a village located at the edge of Kuno National Park . As the cheetahs pounced on the calf, the villagers yelled and pelted stones at the cheetahs as they ran into the forest. Although the cheetah trackers tried to stop the villagers, they were outnumbered. This incident has raised serious questions, especially at a time when the project is considered to be on the right track after the release of 17 cheetahs into the wild. Critics have once again asked: Are the animals safe? Will Kuno's villages face more cases of human-animal conflict? And the biggest question: Can Kuno support 17 cheetahs and provide enough prey to sustain them? Let's analyze this with the help of Grok , a generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by xAI. Stones Hurled At Cheetahs But first, the real-life drama on the dusty tracks of Sheopur, where Kuno is locate...
It may not be an iconic wildlife species yet pangolin is the most trafficked animal on the earth - both dead and alive. When the world was busy protecting tigers, the wildlife criminals shifted their focus to pangolin following the increasing demand for its scales and meat in Chinese and Vietnamese markets. More than 1,000,000 pangolins were trafficked over a 10-year period, with 2019 data indicating that a pangolin is poached every three minutes. As the mammal started depleting alarmingly , Madhya Pradesh started a pioneering work by radio tagging pangolins with the help of Wildlife Conservation Trust (WCT) . Radio Tagging Ray of Hope In a major conservation programme for the scaly anteater, the radio tagging of the shy nocturnal animal started in the central India state in 2020 . The WCT along with the state forest department radio-tagged the first Indian Pangolin (Manis crassicaudata) on February...