Will soon launch project to conserve Asiatic Lions: PM Modi

AHMEDABAD: The Prime Minister in his address to the nation from the Red Fort announced that the Union government will lay emphasis on Project Lion, a project for conservation of Asiatic lion.
This is the first time that the Union government has laid emphasis on Project Lion. Prime Minister in his address said that the country has successfully implemented Project Tiger and Project Elephant. “The population of Tiger has increased in the country and now we are taking up Project Lion for Asiatic Lions in the coming days,” he said in his address. The project will focus on infrastructure which is suitable for the lions and will also lay emphasis on creating health infrastructure for the lions, he announced.
According to the latest count recently declared the Lion population had registered a 29% increase, in the past five years, with their population going up from 523 in 2015 to 674 in 2020. The Lions in Gujarat are found in an area of about 30,000 sq km.
A senior officer from the Gujarat Forest department said that the project was expected as the centre, after the Covid outbreak, had announced a Rs 98 crore project lion for creating hospital and disease surveillance.
The officer said that the implementation of the project would mean more funds for the Lion conservation and for disease surveillance.Moreover, the methods used for Tiger surveillance and monitoring would also be implemented for the Asiatic Lions in its Saurashtra region the last abode of the Asiatic Lion.
The officer said that even the ministry of environment, forest and climate change team, which had recently visited the Gujarat forest after death of Lion in Dhari and nearby areas, had also advocated the need for project lion on the lines similar to that of the Project Tiger. The officer said that even during the webinar on Lion the Ministry of Forest and Environment had asked Gujarat to rope in Indian Veterinary Research Institute and National Institute of Virology for disease surveillance.
It was in 2017 that the 31-member Parliamentary committee had visited Gir forest and in its report stated that the central government must take up the conservation of endangered Asiatic lions on the lines of Project Tiger. The parliamentary committee was headed by Congress MP Renuka Chowdhury who had strongly pitched for a ‘statutory support’ to strengthen lion conservation efforts.