Too many Royals!

The Hindustan Times reports that the Gir Forest – the world's only, only, surviving natural habitat for the Asiatic Lion is facing a problem with too many lions. About a year back, I read of a proposal that some of these lions would be shifted to neighbouring Madhya Pradesh – but apparently that hasn't happened. As HT reports:

The last official census in 2005 revealed 359 lions where there were 180 three decades ago in Gir, set up in 1974 as the Indian lion's home.

Only, no one told the lions.

"They don't know where reserve forest limits end and villages begin," noted I. K. Chauhan, deputy conservator of forests. "They go wherever they see thick vegetation."

Gir, spread over a core area of 258.7 square km in Gujarat's Junagadh district, can accommodate upto 300 lions. That's not enough now.

The solution: Expand the core area — no humans allowed here — or move some lions.

Expanding the core will displace tribals, and that's politically impossible. As for finding a new home, the Gujarat government refuses to share its lions.

Madhya Pradesh has been trying to lay its hand on a few of Gir's surplus lions for more than a decade, hoping to move them to a forest near Gwalior, to its Kunopalpur forest reserve.

Read the rest of the report here. Even as one reads of the success, there is a string of concern I'd think – from both the smallness of the geographical area the lions are in, and the success measured only by numbers relative to their minimums.

The fact is, being the world's only natural habitat means that any small reversal, any tinkering with the relatively small gene pool could probably wipe out the entire stock of lions – so its not just a huge success, beyond the obvious numbers game.

What India requires for conservation are

1.      Prepare a pathway to restore enough wild habitat back to the wild

2.      Prepare and carry out a plan that allows for enough growth in number of wild animals
And, the most neglected, but equally important part

3.      Prepare for failures AND successes – in terms of changing strategies in 1 & 2 above, in terms of allocating extra resources if required.

4.      Prepare plans for 1 & 2 such that the public at large – and especially children and villagers/tribals living near reserves appreciate and learn to protect wildlife.

None of points 1 through 4 are easy. But the government has to approach this systematically. It will need to assemble disparate experts and teams to do that – no just environmentalists and wild life experts but teams that are experts in logistics, in motivation, in publicizing events, in selling to children, to the rural world – use the services of the FMCG world if needed.

 

 Tag:  Conservation, Environmental Awareness, The Lion, Endangered Species, Conservation Strategies.