The government is re-examining a long-standing plan to translocate Asiatic lions from Gir National Park in Gujarat to Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh. It told the Supreme Court recently that it would re-examine the viability of relocating the lions to Kuno, where cheetahs brought from Namibia and South Africa were released recently.
With the introduction of cheetahs in Kuno and the healthy growth of the lion population in Gir forests, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, and the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), decided to re-examine the translocation of Asiatic lions from Gir to Kuno. NTCA said it would file a status report on this in six months.
In 2013, the apex court had ordered the government to translocate Asiatic lions from Gujarat to Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh. However, the translocation remained on paper. The centre’s 25-year roadmap for Project Lion has no provision for any translocation outside Gujarat. Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence Day speech on August 15, 2020, announced Project Lion and shared the government’s resolve and commitment to work for the long-term conservation of Asiatic lions in the country.
That time, the Supreme Court had scrapped the plan for bringing African cheetahs to Kuno as the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change had said it would consider relocating Asiatic lions instead. It was feared these lions would soon be extinct.
After the Supreme Court permitted the introduction of cheetahs to Kuno in 2020 and the action plan in that regard kickstarted, NTCA said: “As per the Action Plan for cheetah introduction in India, annually 8-14 cheetahs are required to be imported from African countries for the next five years at least.” So far, 20 cheetahs have been brought in.
In its affidavit, through Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati, NTCA informed the Court that as the cheetahs had started hunting on their own they needed to be provided with a stress-free environment. This, she feared, could be disturbed with the relocation of a large carnivore like the lion and reduce the survival chances of both species.
NTCA said that the lion population increased by 29% over the past five years and it was looking for measures to secure its future beyond Gir. It also emphasised that although cheetahs and lions in African countries are known to co-exist, competitively subordinate and vulnerable carnivores (cheetah) should be released prior to the dominant species (lions). “The lion population is showing healthy growth and is naturally dispersing to larger landscapes and not confined to smaller habitats, which are prone to epidemics and natural disaster. Further, several meta populations of lions have been established across the landscape,” NTCA said.
A few days back, the Gujarat government had proposed a second home for Asiatic lions in Barda Wildlife Sanctuary in Gujarat, about 100 km away from their present home in Gir National Park. This was a final push of a long-delayed plan to move some lions from their only and very crowded home in the country. Barda is a natural second home for lions moving from Gir and was established in 1979.
On January 18, 2023, a radio-collared male lion of around three and a half years entered Barda Sanctuary, which the officials added, showed that this Sanctuary can easily become a second home of lions. The Gujarat forest department estimates that the lion population now would be more than 700, half of which is outside Gir. Lions are distributed in nine districts of Saurashtra, including Junagadh, Gir Somnath, Amreli, Bhavnagar, Rajkot, Botad, Porbander, Jamnagar and Surendranagar across an area of 30,000 sqkm, which is termed as the Asiatic Lion Landscape.
Uday Vora, a former Chief Conservator of Forest (Wildlife), Gujarat, reportedly said that the population of Asiatic lions has more or less stabilised in Gir sanctuary even as greater numbers of the carnivore are seen outside the protected areas. “Though bit late, developing Barda as a new home for lions, is still timely. The lion population is rising by the day and this is pushing a large number of them outside Gir. Lion centric habitat management, which includes thinning of the forest cover in Gir, would increase the carrying capacity inside the protected areas.”
In 1993, a workshop was held on the Population and Habitat Viability Assessment of Asiatic lions and the report was presented to the state forest departments in Vadodara, Gujarat. State forest departments were asked to suggest suitable sites for reintroduction and provide the basic ecological data.
During the workshop, a number of teams were formed to focus on varied aspects of the conservation biology of the Asiatic lion such as monitoring, habitat (further subdivided into Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan sub-groups), population modeling, prey-base requirements, lion-human interactions, translocation, captive zoo animals, public education, veterinary, reproductive and genetic aspects.
After all, this is the King of the Jungle.
—By Abhilash Kumar Singh and India Legal Bureau