IWN Report — Wednesday, 23 September 2026

Gaurav, one of the eight Namibian cheetahs that founded India’s cheetah reintroduction programme in 2022, died at Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh on Monday, four days after an India-born cheetah at the same reserve gave birth to a second litter, having lost her first four cubs to suspected predation in May.

Officials with Project Cheetah rescued the ten-year-old male from the wild on 12 September after he was found weak, dehydrated and losing muscle mass, and he died during treatment nine days later, on 21 September. Officials have so far described only an underlying chronic condition; a post-mortem is under way to confirm the exact cause.

Second Litter

KGP12, an India-born female and the daughter of Gamini — a cheetah brought to Kuno from South Africa in 2023 — gave birth to four cubs in the wild at Kuno on 18 September, a day after the programme marked its fourth anniversary. Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav, whose ministry oversees Project Cheetah, announced the birth the same day. “Four years, four new lives — a beautiful symbol of hope, resilience and the growing success of cheetah conservation in India,” he said, according to a report on state broadcaster News On AIR.

KGP12’s first litter, also four cubs, was born on 11 April and found dead near their den in Kuno’s Sheopur range a month later, partially eaten. The Cheetah Project’s field director said at the time that predation, most likely by a leopard, appeared to be the cause. No formal post-mortem finding was ever made public; IWN checked again as recently as 3 June and found none had been released since.

Founding Generation

Both events bookend a status review that Project Cheetah itself released on 17 September, the exact fourth anniversary of the day the first eight cheetahs touched down from Namibia. At that point, India’s cheetah population stood at 52, with 49 at Kuno and three at the newer Gandhi Sagar Wildlife Sanctuary, and 32 born on Indian soil. Of the original Namibian eight, the review counted three still alive — Gaurav among them, at the time.

The programme’s hardest stretch came early, between March and August 2023, when six of the translocated adults and three first-generation cubs died. One of the cubs who did survive that period, a female named Mukhi, is now a mother of five herself, part of what the review calls “an important consolidation phase” in India’s reintroduction effort.

With Gaurav’s death, the national count has fallen to 55 — 51 at Kuno, including 36 India-born cheetahs, and four at Gandhi Sagar — which leaves two of the original Namibian eight still alive.

Sources: News On AIR · News On AIR · Down To Earth · National Tiger Conservation Authority