Asiatic Lion Information Centre

The Asiatic lion news archive - 2005

Stories relating to the Asiatic lion and updates on the captive breeding programme from 2005.

DATELINE: 14 September, 2005
Gir lions held hostage!

Proloy Bagchi, Manuj Features
ex-Addl Secy in the MOC GoI.

It has been a ceaseless long wait of eleven years for the Kuno-Palpur sanctuary in the Sheopur district of Madhya Pradesh. Selected in 1994 by the Government of India as the site for the second habitat for the endangered Asiatic lions, the sanctuary is still waiting for them. Having spent 23 crores or providing the right habitat with a proper prey-base and having relocated more than 1500 families out of the sanctuary the indecision about relocation of the lions is inexplicable. Curiously, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MOEF) has so far given no reasons for the delay.
Stories of reluctance of the Gujarat government to part with the lions, supposedly the state's pride, have, however, been doing the rounds. It cannot be anybody's case that the lions are not vulnerable in their present habitat. The very fact that the Asiatic Lion is today confined in an "impossibly small slice of their former domain" is indicative of their vulnerability. Splitting about 100,000 years ago from its African cousin, the Asiatic

Lion used to roam over vast tracts of Europe, Middle East and Asia. Becoming extinct in the Eastern Europe and the Balkans around AD 100, it disappeared from the Palestine around the time of the Crusades.

Nevertheless, they were still widely distributed in Asia Minor and in West and South-West Asia. They however died off in Turkey during the beginning of the nineteenth Century, surviving in Iraq until 1918 and the last sighting of them in Iran in 1942.

In India lions used to roam right up to Bihar. Emperor Akbar, used to travel all the way to the forests of Rewa to hunt them. The species, however, came under attack from the British who virtually decimated it. By the late 19th Century it had found refuge in the Gir Forest in Junagarh. Ironically, sheer selfish pursuit of the pleasure of hunting them, a feudal, the Nawab of Junagarh, saved the handsome beasts from extinction.

The 300-odd surviving lions crammed in an area of approximately 1400 square kilometres of the sanctuary are quite a crowd. They cannot, therefore, be blamed if they wander off on to the periphery, or even beyond and attack humans, or sometimes kill their livestock.

In fact, cohabitation with cattle of the maldharis, professional graziers, has fostered a diet make-up among them that has a high percentage of livestock. In every documentary on the sanctuary one sees maldharies casually walking their cattle for grazing through the lion country. In the process, they adversely impact on the food-stock of the herbivores - the wild ungulates, the natural prey-base of the lions - inducing a reduction in their strength. Failure of the Gujarat Government to shift the human and ancillary population out of the sanctuary is a crucial reason for relocating the lions in a second home. Worse, living in a single progressively-degrading habitat, the lions are exposed to unpredictable natural or man-made disasters like epidemics or forest fires. Even a live bidi carelessness thrown by a villager can cause unforeseen devastation.

Although, some experts feel the Asiatic Lions are safe for another hundred years, yet other risk-factors have to be reckoned with, particularly, that of a high population in a single crowded sanctuary. That itself is enough of a reason for relocation of a viable population in the especially-created Kuno-Palpur sanctuary. Besides, such relocation wouldn't be a virgin effort. For the fear of losing the whole species in case of a mishap, a new home for the lions of Gir was created on the basis of a decision taken more than half a century back in the inaugural session of the Indian Board of Wild Life held in 1952. The Chandraprabha Sanctuary was created in the Varanasi Forest Division where a lion and two lionesses were released in 1957. Obviously, they took to their new surroundings and got adapted to the local habitat as, it seems, their number quickly rose and was likely to have been eleven by 1964. Subsequent developments are not known. Perhaps some were hunted down and others either died naturally or for want of care.

Having put them on the national emblem it would be a pity if the last of the Asiatic Lions are allowed to die off because of governmental indecision. An immediate decision for their relocation is called for before it is too late and before the investments on refurbishing the Kuno-Palpur sanctuary becomes a waste. With tigers under severe threat, the survival of the Asiatic Lion cannot be held hostage to such vacillation, or even to Gujarat's pride or other parochial considerations. They are not Gujarati lions, anyway; they are Asiatic lions, and, by a quirk of their fate, happen to be at their last stand in the State.