Centre’s lion plan continues to ignore urgent imperative of relocating the animal out of Gir

The Asiatic Lion once roamed the forests of north, central and eastern India. But since the early 20th century, its range has shrunk to the Gir forest. Protected area status for the forest since the 1960s resulted in reviving the species from the brink of extinction. But for nearly 30 years now, conservation experts have been arguing that lion numbers have exceeded Gir’s carrying capacity — the animal is often spotted in villages and farms. They also argue that concentration of the species in one park makes it vulnerable to infectious diseases, such as the canine distemper outbreak that killed 1,000 African lions in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park in the early 1990s. But the Gujarat government has stubbornly resisted the move to relocate a pride of the animal to Kuno, often on grounds completely unrelated to conservation — in 2013, for instance, it described the animals “as family members who cannot be parted with”. That year, the Supreme Court minced no words in rejecting the state’s appeal. “The cardinal issue is not whether the Asian lion is a family member, but the preservation of an endangered species,” it said and directed Gujarat to relocate the lions in six months. But Gujarat continued to drag its feet over the matter, even as canine distemper outbreaks have taken a regular toll of Gir’s lion population since 2018.

The conservation story has acquired another unscientific twist in the last two weeks. Kuno is making plans to welcome cheetahs from Namibia. The argument of the MP conservation authorities that the introduction of the top predator will improve the park’s health is well taken. But as an analysis by this paper showed, Kuno’s cheetah population will not be viable even in 40 years. Experts believe the Gir lions would have been far more effective in the role assigned to the cheetahs. Conservation authorities need to do some rethinking on big cats.