The Collar Worked, the Boundary Didn't: What KNG22's Death Says About Project Cheetah's Real Frontier

Protection Stops at the Park Boundary; the Cheetahs Do Not Project

Cheetah's goal was never a few cats inside Kuno National Park. The plan aims for a metapopulation: cheetahs spreading out, establishing territories and linking up across a wider landscape. KNG22 was doing exactly what that plan requires. He was born wild, reached dispersal age and moved outward. He was then shot in a forest where the project's protection did not reach.

What Was Promised, What the Data Shows

The project's surveillance did its job. KNG22 was radio-collared and tracked by a dedicated team. Project Cheetah animals wear satellite-GPS collars with VHF and UHF transmitters and are monitored round the clock by Madhya Pradesh Forest Department teams supported by the Wildlife Institute of India.

Yet he was found injured in the Pahargarh range of the Morena Territorial Forest Division on 25 October and died two days later in Jabalpur. Surgeons recovered five firearm pellets. Asked how the cub had strayed so far and why monitoring teams did not intervene sooner, Kuno director Uttam Kumar Sharma reportedly declined to comment, saying the incident happened outside his jurisdiction.

That answer is the diagnosis. The failure was not in tracking or in the science of reintroduction. It was in enforcement and coordination across jurisdictions. Inside the park, a dedicated team protects each animal. Once the animal crosses into a territorial forest, responsibility is split between divisions and the strongest protection stays behind at the park boundary.

Why Morena Is Dangerous

Morena's landscape adds to the risk. The Indian Express notes its rugged ravines and the reported availability of locally made firearms. Earlier in 2026, investigators linked an alleged interstate network to the killing of at least 10 leopards across the Kuno, Morena and Sheopur forest landscape and more than 10 people were arrested.

One line of inquiry now is whether KNG22 was mistaken for a leopard. Whether he was the intended target or not, he walked into an area where an active poaching network operates.

What Is Working and What Has to Change

The state's response shows that the right tools exist. The State Tiger Strike Force, Madhya Pradesh's specialised wildlife crime unit, was deployed on the night of 26 October and a four-member task force of police and forest officers has been formed.

Kuno officials say they have been gathering intelligence on poaching networks since 2022. Offences against a Schedule I species carry three to seven years' imprisonment. But these tools are being used after the fact. The lesson from tiger corridors applies directly.

Between 2021 and 2022, tigers moving through the Kanha-Pench and Bandhavgarh-Sanjay Dubri corridors were killed by poisoning and electrocution and the NTCA responded by requiring landscape-level corridor management plans beyond core zones.

Project Cheetah needs the same shift now:

• Unified command across Kuno and neighbouring territorial divisions for every collared animal.
• Use of the leopard-poaching intelligence to clear known networks from dispersal routes before more cheetahs reach them.
• Community engagement in villages along the routes, so that local people become the first line of protection. For the exam, the insight is that reintroduction succeeds or fails in the landscape around a protected area, not inside it and that India's governance of wildlife is still organised around park boundaries the animals do not recognise.