In this edition of Punchline advertising, veteran Tarun Chauhan discusses the unfortunate demise of cheetahs in Kuno National Park. The South African female cheetah, named Nirva, which had been missing in Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh's Sheopur district since her radio collar ceased functioning on July 21, has been successfully located after a search operation spanning 22 days, as reported by officials.
Nirva was apprehended in the Dhoret range of Kuno National Park around 10 a.m., and subsequently underwent a health examination.
Over the course of the past three weeks, an extensive hunt had been underway for the female cheetah, following the malfunctioning of her radio collar on July 21. The Chief Wildlife Warden of the Madhya Pradesh Forest department issued a statement detailing these efforts.
The search for the elusive feline involved more than 100 field personnel, including officers, veterinarians, and cheetah trackers, tirelessly scouring day and night. The operation was further supported by two drone teams, a dog squad, and available elephants.
Local residents were also kept informed about Nirva's situation, adding to the collective effort to locate her.
#Cheetah #PMModi #IndependenceDay #Wildlife #Punchline #TarunChauhan #HWNews
Nirva was apprehended in the Dhoret range of Kuno National Park around 10 a.m., and subsequently underwent a health examination.
Over the course of the past three weeks, an extensive hunt had been underway for the female cheetah, following the malfunctioning of her radio collar on July 21. The Chief Wildlife Warden of the Madhya Pradesh Forest department issued a statement detailing these efforts.
The search for the elusive feline involved more than 100 field personnel, including officers, veterinarians, and cheetah trackers, tirelessly scouring day and night. The operation was further supported by two drone teams, a dog squad, and available elephants.
Local residents were also kept informed about Nirva's situation, adding to the collective effort to locate her.
#Cheetah #PMModi #IndependenceDay #Wildlife #Punchline #TarunChauhan #HWNews
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Hello, good evening.
00:07 Another day, another show.
00:18 But this show is going to be slightly different.
00:19 It is going to be away from branding, marketing, politicians and politics.
00:26 It is a show about a very emotional subject and I am going to talk about it.
00:31 And I am going to talk about it at length.
00:33 And let us see how it goes.
00:37 So let me first set the context what I am going to say.
00:40 You know when you grow up in a place like Sikandarabad, which is not a, which used to
00:43 be a small little containment when we were growing up, now it has become a big city.
00:48 Most of us had bikes.
00:49 Our mode of transport was bikes.
00:52 We lived on bikes.
00:53 And bikes were a way of our life.
00:59 So because we lived on bikes, every long weekend was a ride into the countryside.
01:06 So from Sikandarabad we had some standard destinations.
01:10 We went to the Nagarjuna Sagar Dam or we went to the Srisailam forest.
01:14 These were our two big hunting grounds.
01:23 Srisailam forest possibly was the first big forest that I physically saw.
01:28 It was a teak forest, huge, big, lots of trees, very thick.
01:33 You couldn't see daylight.
01:36 And it was infested with tigers.
01:37 Did I see one?
01:41 No.
01:42 But the villagers, the local people gave us a lot of stories.
01:46 And we loved the stories.
01:47 We used to sit there with them, have a, have lunch, have tea and listen to stories.
01:53 Tiger was their part of the DNA.
01:56 They co-existed with the tiger.
02:02 My mother came from Maharashtra and my maternal uncle was a district collector.
02:11 So his last posting was in Chandrapur.
02:15 Chandrapur was close to Thadova.
02:18 And I remember pretty much after every dinner, we used to catch the driver and the jeep,
02:25 all the kids, get into the jeep and go into the forest.
02:29 This we must have done for four, five years before Thadova became what it became today.
02:33 It used to be a wild, superb forest.
02:37 Anyway, we saw a lot of wild there.
02:40 We saw wildlife.
02:41 We saw boars, deer.
02:43 At night, you couldn't see much.
02:45 Couple of times we spotted a tiger at a distance.
02:48 And yeah, it was beautiful.
02:49 We used to go to our local forest guest house there, hang out for some time and come back
02:53 home.
02:54 It was very standard.
02:55 And that's how we grew up.
02:58 Around the mid of 2000, 2005 I think, that was the first maiden trip to Africa, which
03:04 is when I saw what is the African wildlife, so different from Indian wildlife.
03:11 The elephants were bigger, the lion prides were bigger, and the cheetah was faster.
03:18 I've never seen an animal that runs faster than a cheetah.
03:22 And I've seen a couple of kills in Africa.
03:24 I've seen it from the Tanzania side, from the Kenya side, Nairobi side, Kruger National
03:32 Park.
03:33 I mean, you can just go on naming them.
03:35 They're fantastic.
03:36 But my favorite animal always in Africa has been the black mamba.
03:40 You have to see to believe it in the wild, the way it moves.
03:43 It moves faster than a cheetah.
03:44 And it was fantastic.
03:45 Scary and fantastic.
03:46 Anyway, so I have been exposed to a little bit of wildlife.
03:53 Around the same time, my journey in the Indian tiger reserve started.
04:00 I must have done two or three in a year from across the country, from Kana to Pains, Tadoba,
04:08 Andhavgarh, Southern Forest near Coorg, Madhumalai.
04:17 And my favorite has always been Ranthambore.
04:19 I just love it.
04:20 The history, geography is so beautiful.
04:23 Though all the other forests also are beautiful.
04:27 Ranthambore has stories.
04:30 2015, I saw Ustad.
04:32 We're all friends.
04:33 We saw Ustad for the last time.
04:35 He walked with us for about two and a half hours.
04:39 And next day, he did a famous kill.
04:40 He killed a forest guard and he went to the zoo.
04:44 Now, I'm not getting into the merit, demerit of that.
04:47 But Ustad was, I think we saw him one day before he got caught or two days before he
04:50 got caught.
04:51 That was the same visit where we saw Noor.
04:56 She had a cub called Sultan.
04:59 Ustad and Noor's child, cub.
05:02 Krishna was there on the lake.
05:05 She also is a beautiful tigress.
05:08 We left the forest at about 5.30, 4.00 to 6.00 and at the gate we saw Machli and that
05:14 was a fantastic sighting.
05:16 She was there for about 45 minutes with us.
05:18 And a week or so after that, she died.
05:19 She was very old, the mother of Ranthambore.
05:24 On zone 9 or 10 was Fateh, Ustad's brother.
05:27 When Ustad got captured by the forest department and put in a zoo, Fateh moved in.
05:35 And the folklore is that Fateh, Noor mated with Fateh to save Sultan.
05:41 Normally a nursing mother doesn't mate, but to save her cub, she did that.
05:46 These are beautiful animal stories.
05:49 I can go on and on for hours.
05:51 I have so many stories because living that life is so beautiful.
05:59 And in the middle of all that, we bring some cheetahs from Africa and leave them in that
06:03 national park, Kono National Park, which was not meant for cheetahs.
06:06 It's meant for, it was designed to put lions there.
06:09 The excess lions from Gir were supposed to move there.
06:13 But they got these cheetahs and left them there.
06:16 You need to understand the Indian subcontinent cat and the African cat.
06:22 The African cat relies heavily on stealth and speed.
06:25 They chase and they kill.
06:27 The lion pride surrounds and kills.
06:29 The cheetah chases and kills.
06:32 The lion, the tiger is completely the opposite.
06:37 The tiger operates on stealth and pounces.
06:40 He's got no speed.
06:44 He has power and he is extremely deceptive.
06:49 The problem with Indian subcontinent forest is that out of 20 hunts, 25 hunts a tiger
06:54 goes for, he wins once, he loses 24 times.
07:00 Because the forest doesn't let him kill an animal and it is a fantastic balance between
07:08 the prey and the killer.
07:12 The moment a tiger goes on to a hunt, the calling starts.
07:16 And when you sit in a canter on a jeep in a forest and when the calling starts, it's
07:20 a fabulous experience.
07:22 You know there's a tiger on a hunt.
07:24 You know that the other animals are warning each other that this guy is moving around.
07:29 This is the ecosystem in which tiger survives.
07:30 It's trained, its DNA, its genetic structure, it's trained from a cub size.
07:36 You bring a leopard, you bring a cheetah from Africa, which is trained to hunt in the plains
07:41 and leave them in a tropical forest.
07:43 How will they survive?
07:46 A tropical forest will not let you hunt.
07:48 By nature it is designed to keep the prey away from the hunter.
07:53 These cheetahs can't run in a thick bush.
07:57 They are designed to run on plains.
08:00 I mean there's everything wrong about this cheetah introduction into Indian forest.
08:04 We've lost 9 of them.
08:06 Every morning we get up and we read one cheetah has died.
08:09 Whoever is doing it, I think it's a criminal offense to bring animals from there and kill
08:17 them like this.
08:18 Send them back.
08:19 They are not going to survive.
08:21 They are not tropical cheetahs.
08:23 These are not the Indian cheetah that went extinct.
08:25 These are African cheetahs.
08:26 They are very different.
08:29 You want to introduce cheetahs again, it's a long process.
08:32 It's not something you bring some from somewhere and leave them in the wild.
08:35 It doesn't work.
08:36 Put them back in the zoo.
08:39 Put them back wherever you want.
08:40 But don't let them just die.
08:41 It's heartbreaking.
08:42 These animals give us so much of joy.
08:45 They give us so much of, you know, love.
08:48 Why are you doing this to them?
08:51 Put them back in the forest.
08:52 Put them back in Africa.
08:53 Send them back.
08:54 Or if you can't do that, put them in a zoo.
08:58 What is this slaughter going on?
09:01 These cheetahs can't hunt.
09:03 They can't run in this tropical forest.
09:06 They don't know their way.
09:08 They are all over the place.
09:10 You find them in fields here and there.
09:12 They don't know their territory.
09:13 Just stop it.
09:14 I mean, I'm praying to the Prime Minister since he went to introduce them into the forest.
09:20 Just go back them, go back to the forest and put them back in the cage.
09:24 Don't kill them.
09:25 Please.
09:26 It's good.
09:27 It's bad for us.
09:28 It's bad for the optics.
09:29 All the hard work that India Forest Department has done over years to save the tiger, all
09:35 the reputation goes down the drain for this one stupid mistake.
09:39 Just stop it.
09:40 Just stop it.
09:41 Do whatever you can.
09:43 I don't have a solution.
09:44 But I'm just saying, you have two options.
09:46 You send them back or you put them in a zoo.
09:48 Figure out one of them and save them.
09:51 Please don't let any more die.
09:55 Please.
09:56 I mean, this is not a, this is a message from an environmentalist, a guy who loves the environment,
10:02 a person who celebrates every moment in the wild.
10:07 And like me, there are thousands of people or lakhs of people who do this annually.
10:12 And we all are pained by what's going on.
10:14 Just stop it.
10:15 I hope this message travels.
10:17 If you're watching it, please share it amongst your friends and family.
10:22 And let's all help each other stop this process.
10:24 It's not a good thing.
10:26 And it's very painful.
10:29 It's very, very painful.
10:32 I mean, beyond this, what can I say?
10:35 I just, I just find it very painful to read a news article every morning and headline
10:42 that a cheetah has died.
10:45 No, please stop it.
10:48 Thank you.
10:49 I'm sorry, but this has been an emotional one.
10:52 But I have a platform, so I'm saying it.
10:56 Use your own little platform, WhatsApp groups to say it.
10:59 And let the message reach whoever it has to reach, who can help the situation.
11:05 Thank you.
11:06 See you soon.
11:07 Bye.
11:07 Bye.
11:08 (upbeat music)
11:11 you