Forest Staff Who Offered Water To Mother Cheetah And Her Cubs At Kuno National Park Suspended
A video of a man offering water to a pack of cheetahs has been going viral on the internet, receiving much praise from users. However, it didn’t sit well with the Madhya Pradesh wildlife officials who took disciplinary action against the individual. What went wrong that a kind gesture of coexistence led to such consequences?
The incident is from the Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh, where the female cheetah Jwala and her four cubs were offered water by a staff member.
The video in question shows the member pouring water into a large metal bowl and then calling out to them. The animals responded instantly. Jwala, one of the many animals transported from Namibia under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Project Cheetah, appeared to be quite calm and friendly as she started drinking from the bowl. The cubs soon followed their mother, the video shows.
While the video received widespread appreciation on the internet, the man, identified as Satyanarayan Gurjar, a forest department driver, has been suspended from his position, as per The Times of India. As per reports, the forest officers feared that the cheetahs might get too comfortable around humans and even stray into residential areas, increasing the risk of attacks on humans.
“The recent act of offering water symbolizes a growing understanding and shift in behaviour. The villagers, perhaps realising that the cheetahs were not inherently a threat but part of the region’s natural ecosystem, chose to approach the situation differently this time. But again, we would not want them to get this close and develop any bond like this,” an official said.
Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (APCCF) Uttam Kumar Sharma, in a statement, confirmed that action has been taken against the concerned staff. Mentioning that the cheetah and her cubs have been moving close to human habitations for a while now. He added that the monitoring team has been instructed to lure them back into the forest to avoid any sort of human-cheetah conflict.
The development came just a few days after Jwala and her cubs hunted down a dozen goats in the village, resulting in a tense confrontation with the villagers.
