Prabhash & Pavak Prime Choice For New Site At Gandhi Sagar

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Prabhash and Pavak—a coalition of two male cheetahs translocated from Kuno National Park (KNP) to Gandhi Sagar Sanctuary (Mandsaur)—are in their prime and considered most suitable to handle the new site.

Both have adapted well to Indian conditions and have sired progeny at KNP. Pavak is father of Gamini’s four cubs, while Prabhash has recently fathered two cubs with Veera.

This information has been provided in the newsletter issued by Kuno National Park on Monday. The newsletter, titled “Second Home of Cheetah—Gandhi Sagar: A new chapter in Project Cheetah,” states that on April 20, Gandhi Sagar sanctuary became the second home for cheetahs in India with a historic footnote: "Without any supplementation from any foreign country—a milestone which most people thought was a distant future," it said.

The newsletter highlights that developments under Project Cheetah are happening at a fast pace. Whether it is cheetahs’ performance in the wild or the continuous increase in their numbers, the project seems to be moving in the right direction. Gandhi Sagar Sanctuary has now been prepared as the second home for cheetahs.

Surprisingly, the newsletter notes that no one had anticipated that Kuno would become a supplier of cheetahs for other sites. Just a year ago, Kuno—the first cheetah introduction site—was struggling to maintain and boost its cheetah numbers. Now, KNP is supplying cheetahs to new sites.

An expert committee has identified 10 potential sites across seven landscapes in five central Indian states for cheetah introduction. Kuno is the first, Gandhi Sagar the second, and Veerangana Rani Durgawati Tiger Reserve is the third proposed site in Madhya Pradesh. Work is also progressing in Banni Grassland, Gujarat, for the fourth cheetah introduction site.

The newsletter also addresses concerns raised about one of the key goals of Project Cheetah—having cheetahs perform their functional role as top predators at the introduced sites.

It states that even with existing top predators like leopards and occasional tigers, cheetahs, being cursorial predators (like wolves and dholes), exert more significant evolutionary pressures on prey assemblages than ambush predators such as tigers, lions and leopards.