After the death one chetah after another at the Kuno National Park, the wildlife authorities have decided to remove radio collars from 10 free ranging cheetahs.

The move has come after two South African cheetah experts, including one travelling to India this week to aid officials at Kuno said that radio collars could be causing problems, as reported The Indian Express.

Earlier, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC), had said that reports of cheetah deaths due to radio collars were not based on scientific evidence, and that “all mortalities are due to natural causes”.

Madhya Pradesh principal chief conservator of forests (wildlife) J S Chauhan told The Indian Express: “We have a meeting on this issue tomorrow. An infection breaking out because of the radio collar due to the monsoon is a possibility. In these cases, because of high moisture, the cheetah may scratch its skin, which can break and an infection can break out after contact with a fly. It may also be one of the reasons for the cheetah deaths. We need a thorough examination to see if there are other causes. Both the cheetahs have similar organ damage — their kidneys, heart, spleen and kidneys were damaged. The radio collar is not the fatal issue, it can be a contributing factor and it must be addressed.”

Wildlife authorities are expected to carry out the exercise after it was noted that the male coalition of the cheetah brothers from Namibia, Gaurav and Shaurya, also referred to as “The Rock Stars”, have started showing a “similar problem”.

“We suspect that these two male cheetahs may have a similar problem. That is what was seen during our monitoring. We are going to remove their radio collars… that is what common sense would say. It would take a lot of time to remove the collars of all 10-odd wild ranging cheetahs. There are also 5 cheetahs inside the enclosure. We can’t say how much time it would take to remove the collars of the free-ranging cheetahs, but we should ideally remove their collars and monitor them all. We are going to rigorously monitor this issue.”