India’s high-profile programme to build a wild cheetah population suffered a blow when a vehicle on the Agra-Mumbai National Highway hit and killed a 20-month-old cub in the Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh. Just a day earlier, a younger cub died after falling from a hillock in the same sanctuary. Cheetahs dying from natural causes is understandable, but not as roadkill. Prime Minister Narendra Modi should be dismayed at the trend. He marked International Cheetah Day, just a day before the first cub’s death, with the confident assertion that the steadily rising population of the cats was “extremely encouraging” and a “powerful testament to the fact that cheetahs have become fully established in the........

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