Bengaluru: On March 24, people pelted African cheetah Jwala and her four cubs with stones after the big cats tried to hunt a calf on farmland outside Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh, according to reports. However, the cheetahs are doing well, a senior forest official told The Wire on March 26.
Experts had told The Wire – as the first batch of cheetahs were brought in, in September 2022 – that the release of the animals in the wild could aggravate human-wildlife conflict in the area, because cheetahs are known to prey on livestock.
Cheetahs pelted with stones
The incident of stone-pelting occurred on the morning of March 24, when Jwala and her four cubs tried to hunt a calf in the outskirts of Behardha village, said a note by the union environment ministry. Behardha village is just outside Kuno National Park, where India’s ambitious African cheetah introduction programme, Project Cheetah, is ongoing. Seeing the cheetahs try to hunt a calf, a few people gathered and raised their voice and created a commotion to save the calf, the ministry’s note said.
Some of the people also threw stones on the animals to prevent them from hunting the calf. Per the ministry’s note, a monitoring team that was on the spot “tried to prevent any further incident”. The five cheetahs, all reportedly healthy, then moved into the jungle and are currently being tracked by the monitoring team.
A female #cheetah, Jwala, was hunting with her cubs when villagers were stoning and chasing her away. What kind of awareness is this? What kind of wildlife management is this? #kuno @CMMadhyaPradesh @NTANewsNow @PMOIndia @minforestmp pic.twitter.com/6mEmi7s5FY
— ajay dubey (@Ajaydubey9) March 24, 2025
Videos show the cheetahs, seemingly unperturbed by human presence, trying to bring down the calf.
All five cheetahs are, however, doing well, Madhya Pradesh’s Assistant Principal Chief Conservator of Forests Uttam Kumar Singh told The Wire on March 26.
Forest authorities had released the five cheetahs – Namibian cheetah Jwala and her four 14 month-old cubs – into the wild on February 21.
An existing warning
As the first batch of cheetahs came in from Namibia in 2022, experts had told The Wire that the release of the cheetahs into the wild could result in increased human-animal conflict in the area.
With no fences around the 748 sq. km Kuno National Park to keep the cheetahs in, the animals could reach nearby villages, scientist Arjun Gopalaswamy had told The Wire on September 17, 2022, the day the cheetahs were flown into Kuno. Gopalaswamy is founder and chief scientist of Carnassials Global, an organisation that provides science advisory services to governments, universities, etc. in Africa and Asia, and has co-authored studies on population estimation of big cats including tigers in India, African lions in Uganda and South Africa and African cheetahs in Kenya.
Gopalaswamy had told The Wire in 2022 that introducing African cheetahs in Kuno could lead to a “high chance of conflict with people”, through livestock depredation.
“We’ll just have to wait and see,” Gopalaswamy had told The Wire then.
It appears that this prediction is indeed coming true.
In their homes in Africa, negative interactions between people and cheetahs are a big concern, studies reveal. Most of Namibia’s approximately 1,500 cheetahs, for instance, are known to roam on cattle farms – where farmers persecute them because they prey on livestock, according to this 2021 thesis dissertation. A study in 2022 found that cheetahs in southeast Kenya – an area where there is commercial ranching, and therefore, high numbers of livestock – preyed on livestock including goats and cows; and livestock made up a major fraction of their diet. It’s common knowledge in Africa, therefore, that cheetahs do prey on livestock.
Nonetheless, forest officials and officials with Project Cheetah continue to release more of the big cats into the wild in Kuno. The latest release occurred on March 17, when forest officials released adult cheetah Gamini – which was one of the 12 adults brought in from South Africa in February 2023 – and her four 12 month-old cubs (two males and two females) into the wild.
Currently, the total number of African cheetahs in the wild in (and around) Kuno is 17.
