First Cheetah Roadkill: Speeding Vehicle Mows Down Cub Near Gwalior

New Delhi: A speeding vehicle, possibly a car, killed a 20-month-old cheetah cub near Gwalior on Sunday (December 7) morning.

According to the field director of Kuno National Park, the incident occurred at around 6:30 am today, when the male cub, along with its sibling, was crossing National Highway 46 (the Agra-Mumbai National Highway) near Ghati Gaon, Gwalior.

“A speeding vehicle struck one of the cubs, killing it,” the press note issued by the field director said.

Forest offense case registered

The cheetah tracking team and local forest staff were continuously monitoring both cubs but the accident happened before the tracking team could stop the speeding vehicle from hitting the cheetah even though attempts were made to do so, as per the press note.

Forest officials have registered a forest offense case, and the matter is allegedly under investigation. The suspected vehicle has been stopped for questioning in Kota district, Rajasthan, the press note said.

The dead cub is an offspring of African cheetah Gamini. Per reports, authorities had released Gamini and her four cubs in the Khajuri forest area of Kuno National Park in March this year. The other cub is healthy and doing fine, park officials said.

Per the field director’s press note, the number of cheetahs in Kuno National Park is now 27, with 19 cubs and eight adult cheetahs.

Gwalior Zone inspector general of police Arvind Saxena told PTI it could be a car that hit the cheetah cub.

“We have reduced traffic and curtailed speed on the highway to prevent any untoward incident, as another male cub separated from the same mother might still be around. Both were earlier spotted together,” PTI quoted Saxena as saying.

The cub is the second to die this week. On Friday, authorities found a dead cheetah cub, which had been released with its sibling and their mother Veera in the Parond range on December 4. The cub, found around 1.5 kilometres from the release site, appeared to have been separated from its family during the night, reported Indian Express.

First cheetah roadkill

This is the first instance of a roadkill of an African cheetah in India. So far, big cat deaths that have occurred under Project Cheetah have been due to reasons such as septicaemia (brought on possibly by infected wounds caused by radio collars), mating injuries and others.

Wildlife roadkills, however, are not an uncommon feature on Indian roads especially in and around wildlife habitats. One study published in 2022, for instance, recorded 6,036 individual roadkills (across 53 species) in just about a year (from October 2016 to September 2017) on a 64-km stretch of National Highway 715 that passes through Kaziranga National Park in Assam.

Another more recent study published in July this year in the journal Scientific Reports recorded an annual roadkill estimate of 5,490 along a 50 km stretch in the Nelliyampathy Hills in the Western Ghats in Kerala, from June 2023 to May 2024.

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