The Asiatic lion news archive - 2004

Stories relating to the Asiatic lion and updates on the captive breeding programme from 2004.

DATELINE: December 15, 2004
Early extinction for captive lions in India

LONDON: India's entire captive lion population is facing the prospect of death in zoos across the country after a reproductive programme went awry, creating cross-breeds that are not immune to diseases, a media report claimed on Tuesday.

According to the Daily Telegraph, the central zoo authority wants all 350 animals to die out after a flawed reproduction programme allowed the Asiatic lion to mate with its African cousins. It wants to preserve the purity of the Asiatic species, which is slightly smaller than the African variety. Their faulty union resulted in a hybrid strain that lost the Asiatic lion's basic characteristics. According to the report, over the next decade authority plans to replace defective species with pure Asiatic lions from Gir sanctuary.

"The hybridisation between the Asiatic and African Lions and their subsequent inbreeding since the mid-1980s has weakened the bloodline and devastated their gene pool," the director of Chhatbir zoo, had said.

Source: Times of India