Saving The Asiatic Lion In India – Top Conservation Scientists And Managers Explain How

India’s lion conservation journey is under-appreciated.

From the late 1800s, when fewer than 50 Asiatic lions roamed about 100 sq km of Gujarat’s Gir region, focused effort over the years has yielded lion numbers that today hover somewhere around 625 over a 13,000 sq km area.

The lions were brought back from the brink of extinction in India.

In contrast, it’s been a struggle for lion host countries to keep the king of the jungle alive and roaring.

In Africa, for instance, lions are down to fewer than 25,000. They are extinct in as many as 26 African countries and have vanished over 95 per cent of their historical range.

Globally, which is 28 African countries and India, there are half as many lions as there were when The Lion King premiered in theatres in the early 1990s.

In this global context, India has been doing a fine job. Still, the Panthera leo leo – classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) by its former scientific name, Panthera leo persica – is far from safe as evident from its “Endangered” tag on the IUCN Red List.

In 2018, India’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change launched the Asiatic Lion Conservation Project to bolster conservation efforts and much progress has been made. Yet, there are challenges that threaten to reverse progress. India’s top conservation scientists and managers are mulling ideas to take lion conservation to a more secure pedestal.

Eminent wildlife experts and administrators congregated to discuss the way forward in a webinar organised by India’s Central Zoo Authority on 10 August, celebrated as World Lion Day.

One of the key ideas proposed was significantly expanding exclusive, lion-only ‘core’ areas in Gujarat to facilitate natural lion breeding.

Lions have only about 250 sq km in the Gir National Park to themselves. Beyond this area, they are compelled to share space with the local Maldhari folk and some livestock population.

Making this point, Dr Yadvendradev Jhala of the Wildlife Institute of India said, “Our lions are living in human-subsidised landscapes and they have adapted to live with them (humans) because they do not have inviolate space where they can retain themselves as wild lions.”

The goal of any animal conservation drive is to enable a species to fulfil its evolutionary potential. In the case of India’s Asiatic lion, this is getting harder as many of them live among humans.

The urbanisation of the agro-pastoral landscape in Saurashtra is squeezing lions and humans closer together. Besides unwarranted contact with humans, lions are increasingly finding themselves moving about in places unsuitable for them, such as industrial areas.

Dr Jhala makes the case, therefore, that a “sacrosanct space for lions” be carved out. He says a “minimum of 4 sq km inviolate space or habitat patches” will be necessary within Saurashtra for female lions to breed.

In the absence of breeding, lion populations living outside the Gir National Park area could become locally extinct.

Dr Satya Prakash Yadav, additional director general of forests (Project Tiger), highlighted the importance of ex situ conservation of lions. This type of upkeep involves taking the lion out of its threatened habitat and relocating it to another suitable wild area or under the care of zoos and rescue centres.

He attributed the rise in India’s lion numbers over the last couple of centuries to a successful execution of ex situ–in situ linkages, meaning the introduction of lions in captivity and then releasing them in the wild. This strategy, he suggests, should continue.

Also a member secretary of the National Tiger Conservation Authority, Dr Yadav said there are 208 Asiatic lions in captivity with 105 individuals housed in 31 zoos as part of the conservation breeding programme. The Sakkarbaug Zoo in Gujarat is leading these efforts.

For a perspective beyond the science of conservation, Shyamal Tikadar, the chief wildlife warden for Gujarat, pondered whether there was a need to see the Asiatic lion (or tiger for that matter) in the Gujarat area more as a resource than as an asset.

“As conservationists, we don’t really look at it (animals) as a resource, we look at it such that it should be saved, it should be conserved. That the (animal) resource can generate income, can generate protein… we have virtually forgotten about it. Somehow the society doesn’t accept that,” said Tikadar, who is also the principal chief conservator of wildlife (forests) in Gujarat.

“On the one hand, we have branded this thing (lion, tiger) as a commodity, marketed it, but then we cannot sell it,” he said.

Tikadar urged experts to perhaps approach lion conservation in a new way, where an economic incentive is provided for conservation. The tolerance of human communities (mostly Maldharis) living with lions in Gujarat has been special but not one to be taken for granted.

Dr Jhala agreed, stating that there was a need to legalise this economic incentive under the Wildlife Protection Act and the control of the forest department.

This suggestion assumes importance as lions have been venturing out of the Gir protected area into places where they encounter new human populations that may not want lions around them.

This situation could give rise to adverse human-lion conflict.

WWF-India’s Dr Dipankar Ghose said that the focus of the conservation efforts would have to extend to these human-dominated areas beyond the demarcated Gir protected territory in order to promote co-existence.

He suggested that empowered local people could even help out in lion conservation.

“The Gujarat forest department may adopt a similar model (to that of tigers) involving the local communities through the panchayats, where these people will be helping the forest department to monitor dispersing lions. They can become the eyes and ears for the conservation managers,” said Dr Ghose.

“They can also help manage co-existence. A cadre of villagers could be trained for this purpose,” he said.

Whether human communities who don’t have any experience being around lions would be willing to live with them is a contested matter.

Lion conservation in India now stands at a precarious point where much of the good work done in the past could be erased on account of severe disease outbreaks – the canine distemper virus and babesiosis have been spelling trouble – and adverse events arising out of either natural environmental factors or uncontrolled interactions with unfamiliar people.

These threats are amplified because Gir is after all the last refuge of the Asiatic lion, despite which as many as 85 lions have perished in just the months January through May this year. It’s a cause for concern.

Some of Gujarat’s lions are poised to hop on over to the neighbouring state of Madhya Pradesh to live in the Kuno Palpur Wildlife Sanctuary. Although long overdue, the hope is that this small but significant step will come to pass and the Asiatic lion gets a fair shot at thriving in a new home.

In its Indian refuge, the king of the jungle deserves to thrive.