Key Facts
* Common Name - Asiatic lion
* Scientific Name - Panthera leo persica
* Geographic habitat - Gir Forest National Park, Gujarat
* Height - Approx 90cm
* Length - 200-280cm
* Weight - 200-275kg
* Population - Around 300 (359)
* Did you know? - Lion cubs are born blind
* Status - Endangered
Habitat and distribution: The Asiatic lion survives today only in the wilderness of Gir and surrounding forests of western India’s Gujarat state.
Characteristics: Asiatic lions are highly social animals, living in units called prides. Their prides are smaller than those of African lions, with an average of only two females, whereas an African pride has an average of four to six. The Asiatic males are less social and only associate with the pride when mating or on a large kill. This is thought so because their prey animals are smaller than those in Africa, requiring fewer hunters to tackle them. Another difference is that the Asiatic lion have a smaller stomach fold and mane than its African counterpart. Asiatic lions prey predominantly on deer (sambar & chital), antelope (nilgai), wild boar, and livestock.
Source: http://www.wwfindia.org/about_wwf/priority_species/asiatic_lion/
Conservation issues and WWF-India’s interventions
Conservation issues
The lions face the usual threats of poaching and habitat degradation. Three major roads and a railway track pass through the Gir Protected Area, the Asiatic Lion’s last remaining habitat. Also, there are three big temples inside the PA that attract large number of pilgrims, particularly during certain times of the year. But notably, the steps taken by the PA management and the Government of Gujarat, have led to an overall improvement in the habitat conditions and the population of lions has been increasing steadily since 1974. One such step was the relocation of about 50 maldhari nesses outside Gir, which led to improvement in lion population and its habitat.
But the increased population has resulted in their spill over the PA. Therefore, at present, the most pressing threat to the lion population of the Gir PA comes from the increasing hostility toward them from the resident human population. Due to the increase in population, about 100 lions stay outside the PA and face conflicts with humans. Though the conflict is not high now, with changing lifestyles and values these can increase in future.
An emerging threat is the number of lions falling in the open wells in the fields around Gir NP. The main reason is that wells in arable fields are unguarded. These wells have been made at ground level without any protection like parapet walls around them.
Ultimately, this single population is very susceptible to catastrophic events. Increasing the effective range of lions by connecting protected areas with lion-friendly corridors and establishing a second lion population elsewhere in India through translocation are required management options that need to materialize in the medium term future.
WWF-India interventions
The Asiatic lion is a priority species for conservation for WWF-India. Project has been initiated to construct barricades around open wells around the Gir NP to decrease the incidences of lions falling into such wells. The aim is towards long term conservation of the species, and this also includes having a viable wild population of Asiatic lion at an additional place.
The following aspects are important for long term conservation of Asiatic lion in India:
1. Strengthening overall protection measures
2. Habitat management in Gir
3. Mitigating Conflicts outside Gir PA
4. Greater Gir concept
5. Relocation of villages Jambuthala, Timbarwa and Ghodavadi villages.
Source: http://www.wwfindia.org/about_wwf/priority_species/asiatic_lion/conservation_issues/
Showing posts with label Asiatic Lion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Asiatic Lion. Show all posts
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Last of the world's Asiatic lions clawing their way back.
Hannah Gardner, Foreign Correspondent
* Last Updated: March 30. 2010 10:28PM UAE / March 30. 2010 6:28PM GMT
Asiatic lions lounge in the shade of a tree near the village of Sasan on the edge of Gir National Park, their only remaining natural habitat. Raveendran / AFP
GIR, INDIA // One morning, just over three months ago, Abu Bloch was cycling to work when he came across a sight that made his heart sink.
Vehicles from the local forest department were haphazardly parked on the high stone bridge spanning a ravine ahead of him and a dozen officials were peering over the edge. As he moved closer, the cause of the commotion became clear: on the river bank, 30 metres below, lay the body of a fully grown male Asiatic lion – its limbs contorted and its head bloodied.
“I looked, but I didn’t want to see,” Mr Bloch said. “I love lions. I can’t look at a dead one.”
Like many of the residents of Gir Forest in the north-western state of Gujarat, Mr Bloch understands just how precious the life of every Asiatic lion is.
Genetically different from their African cousins, these majestic beasts once inhabited a belt of territory from the Balkans in the west to India in the east.
Today, only an estimated 360 Asiatic lions survive in the wild and they all live in Gir – a 1,600-square-kilometre patch of undulating scrub in south Gujarat.
Since the local nawab, or prince, banned lion-hunting in 1901, the animals have clawed back from the brink of extinction and their population is now growing by eight per cent every five years.
However, the subspecies remains highly vulnerable – not least, conservationists say, because it is concentrated in one area and could be wiped out by a contagious disease.
To protect against this, the Indian government wants to relocate a small number of lions to a park 600km away in the neighbouring state of Madhya Pradesh.
But Gujarat’s chief minister, the controversial and nationalistic Narendra Modi, has repeatedly refused to part with any lions, saying they are, in every sense, “Gujarat’s pride”. Even offers of tigers or cheetahs in exchange for lions have failed to entice Mr Modi.
Now, after more than 15 years of negotiations, proponents of the plan are hoping that the Asiatic lion’s future will finally be secured when the Supreme Court rules on the issue next month.
“Fundamentally, it is a matter of not having all your eggs in one basket,” Ravi Chellam, the director of India’s Wildlife Conservation Society, said in an interview. “The translocation plan is simply an insurance policy for the long-term survival of the Asiatic lion.”
Having been celebrated in European and Asian art and literature as symbols of bravery and nobility for millennia, by the turn of the last century the Asiatic lions had almost been hunted into extinction.
Gir was one of the few places the lions still roamed free and if it had not been for a strange twist of fate they would have been eradicated there, too.
In 1900, the nawab of Junagadh invited the viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, to Gir to shoot lions. On arriving in Gujarat, however, the viceroy learnt that there were as few as 20 lions left and urged the Nawab to protect them.
“The present generation owes it to its successors to restore the only species of a large mammal lost in the plains of India in historical times,” Lord Curzon wrote to the Burma Game Preservation Association at the time.
“Failure to do so would not be forgiven by the judgement of history.”
Thus, in one of the first acts of its kind in India, the nawab banned the lions’ slaughter.
After the turmoil of independence and partition, India’s new government also enacted laws to protect the lions, banning lion hunting in 1955, and declaring Gir a sanctuary in 1965.
By the early nineties however, conservationists were voicing concerns that Gir was overcrowded and a second home was needed to ensure the lions’ survival.
An outbreak of canine distemper in Tanzania’s Serengeti Park in 1994 killed more than 1,000 common African lions, adding weight to their argument, and in 1995 the federal government approved a plan to relocate a handful of lions to Kuno in Madhya Pradesh.
The government spent millions of rupees resettling the new park’s human population and boosting the number of prey.
But it never secured Gujarat’s agreement to part with the lions, and in 2001 – the year the lions were supposed to be transferred – Mr Modi became Gujarat’s chief minister.
The deadlock between Gujarat and the central government deepened when in 2004 Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party was defeated by the Congress Party in a general election. Subsequent attempts to persuade Gujarat to supply lions to Kuno failed and in 2008, a group of conservationists took the state to court.
“We are arguing that no state can claim a monopoly on its wildlife, especially if that wildlife is endangered,” Ritwick Dutta, the lawyer representing the Biodiversity Conservation Trust of India, said.
“Any experiment has an element of risk in it, but it is a necessary risk if you consider that the reward is the long-term survival of the species.”
The conservation trust and other proponents of the move say a second home is also necessary to help ease overcrowding at Gir.
Although the lion population has more than doubled since 1965, Gir’s area has only been expanded by 16 per cent.
As a result, the lions are moving out of the park in search of new homes. One pride was found living in the scrubby grassland of Gujarat’s south coast 40km away from Gir, while another has moved into the hills around Junagadh town.
Inevitably, this brings the lions into greater contact with humans – often with fatal results. Last month, Gujarat’s forestry department released figures that showed 72 lions died in 2008 and 2009, including five from non-natural causes.
The one Mr Bloch saw died when it jumped from a bridge after it was startled by the headlights of a car. Four other lions died from falling down wells.
Last week, villagers near Junagadh hacked a lion to death with an axe after it mauled one of their neighbours.
Although Gujarati officials concede that all such deaths are tragic, they say the lions are still safer in Gir than anywhere else.
They are confident that a census, due next month, will reveal that the lion population has risen since the last time it was counted in 2005. They say they are working to make the environment around Gir safe by covering thousands of wells and building a bypass to move traffic further from the park.
But Gujarat’s strongest argument is the Indian government’s poor record protecting the tiger, the country’s national animal since it replaced the lion in 1973.
Numbers have dropped to 1,411 today from 3,500 in the mid-nineties, largely because of poaching to meet demand for tiger parts from China.
The one case of poaching in recent years in Gir was carried out by trained tiger trappers from Madhya Pradesh, the state where the new park is located. They killed seven lions and discarded their pelts so they could pass off the body parts as those of tigers.
Thirty-eight people were arrested and Gujarati officials say there has not been another case of poaching in Gir since.
“The local communities in Madhya Pradesh have done little to conserve the tiger and now you want to sacrifice the lion there, too? For what?” Pradeep Khanna, the principal chief conservator of forests, asked.
By comparison, the majority of people around Gir are protective of the lions, which draw more than 100,000 tourists each year
“Because of the lions we have jobs; we can afford to send our children to good schools,” said Nitin Ratangayra, a local restaurant manager in Gir. “When a lion dies we are very sad.”
Like him, most of the local community opposes the relocation plan, concerned that tourists would be diverted to Madhya Pradesh if it had both lions and tigers.
Despite this, Mr Khanna said his department will comply if the Supreme Court gives a clear ruling to hand over the lions.
Wildlife activists are concerned that Gujarat will still find ways to hold on to the lions.
“In theory the Supreme Court ruling should make all the difference, but the court has made thousands of rulings which are not complied with,” said Belinda Wright of the Wildlife Protection Society of India. “They will find loopholes or appeal. This is an emotional issue for them now.”
hgardner@thenational.ae
Source: http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100331/FOREIGN/703309912/1103/NEWS
* Last Updated: March 30. 2010 10:28PM UAE / March 30. 2010 6:28PM GMT
Asiatic lions lounge in the shade of a tree near the village of Sasan on the edge of Gir National Park, their only remaining natural habitat. Raveendran / AFP
GIR, INDIA // One morning, just over three months ago, Abu Bloch was cycling to work when he came across a sight that made his heart sink.
Vehicles from the local forest department were haphazardly parked on the high stone bridge spanning a ravine ahead of him and a dozen officials were peering over the edge. As he moved closer, the cause of the commotion became clear: on the river bank, 30 metres below, lay the body of a fully grown male Asiatic lion – its limbs contorted and its head bloodied.
“I looked, but I didn’t want to see,” Mr Bloch said. “I love lions. I can’t look at a dead one.”
Like many of the residents of Gir Forest in the north-western state of Gujarat, Mr Bloch understands just how precious the life of every Asiatic lion is.
Genetically different from their African cousins, these majestic beasts once inhabited a belt of territory from the Balkans in the west to India in the east.
Today, only an estimated 360 Asiatic lions survive in the wild and they all live in Gir – a 1,600-square-kilometre patch of undulating scrub in south Gujarat.
Since the local nawab, or prince, banned lion-hunting in 1901, the animals have clawed back from the brink of extinction and their population is now growing by eight per cent every five years.
However, the subspecies remains highly vulnerable – not least, conservationists say, because it is concentrated in one area and could be wiped out by a contagious disease.
To protect against this, the Indian government wants to relocate a small number of lions to a park 600km away in the neighbouring state of Madhya Pradesh.
But Gujarat’s chief minister, the controversial and nationalistic Narendra Modi, has repeatedly refused to part with any lions, saying they are, in every sense, “Gujarat’s pride”. Even offers of tigers or cheetahs in exchange for lions have failed to entice Mr Modi.
Now, after more than 15 years of negotiations, proponents of the plan are hoping that the Asiatic lion’s future will finally be secured when the Supreme Court rules on the issue next month.
“Fundamentally, it is a matter of not having all your eggs in one basket,” Ravi Chellam, the director of India’s Wildlife Conservation Society, said in an interview. “The translocation plan is simply an insurance policy for the long-term survival of the Asiatic lion.”
Having been celebrated in European and Asian art and literature as symbols of bravery and nobility for millennia, by the turn of the last century the Asiatic lions had almost been hunted into extinction.
Gir was one of the few places the lions still roamed free and if it had not been for a strange twist of fate they would have been eradicated there, too.
In 1900, the nawab of Junagadh invited the viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, to Gir to shoot lions. On arriving in Gujarat, however, the viceroy learnt that there were as few as 20 lions left and urged the Nawab to protect them.
“The present generation owes it to its successors to restore the only species of a large mammal lost in the plains of India in historical times,” Lord Curzon wrote to the Burma Game Preservation Association at the time.
“Failure to do so would not be forgiven by the judgement of history.”
Thus, in one of the first acts of its kind in India, the nawab banned the lions’ slaughter.
After the turmoil of independence and partition, India’s new government also enacted laws to protect the lions, banning lion hunting in 1955, and declaring Gir a sanctuary in 1965.
By the early nineties however, conservationists were voicing concerns that Gir was overcrowded and a second home was needed to ensure the lions’ survival.
An outbreak of canine distemper in Tanzania’s Serengeti Park in 1994 killed more than 1,000 common African lions, adding weight to their argument, and in 1995 the federal government approved a plan to relocate a handful of lions to Kuno in Madhya Pradesh.
The government spent millions of rupees resettling the new park’s human population and boosting the number of prey.
But it never secured Gujarat’s agreement to part with the lions, and in 2001 – the year the lions were supposed to be transferred – Mr Modi became Gujarat’s chief minister.
The deadlock between Gujarat and the central government deepened when in 2004 Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party was defeated by the Congress Party in a general election. Subsequent attempts to persuade Gujarat to supply lions to Kuno failed and in 2008, a group of conservationists took the state to court.
“We are arguing that no state can claim a monopoly on its wildlife, especially if that wildlife is endangered,” Ritwick Dutta, the lawyer representing the Biodiversity Conservation Trust of India, said.
“Any experiment has an element of risk in it, but it is a necessary risk if you consider that the reward is the long-term survival of the species.”
The conservation trust and other proponents of the move say a second home is also necessary to help ease overcrowding at Gir.
Although the lion population has more than doubled since 1965, Gir’s area has only been expanded by 16 per cent.
As a result, the lions are moving out of the park in search of new homes. One pride was found living in the scrubby grassland of Gujarat’s south coast 40km away from Gir, while another has moved into the hills around Junagadh town.
Inevitably, this brings the lions into greater contact with humans – often with fatal results. Last month, Gujarat’s forestry department released figures that showed 72 lions died in 2008 and 2009, including five from non-natural causes.
The one Mr Bloch saw died when it jumped from a bridge after it was startled by the headlights of a car. Four other lions died from falling down wells.
Last week, villagers near Junagadh hacked a lion to death with an axe after it mauled one of their neighbours.
Although Gujarati officials concede that all such deaths are tragic, they say the lions are still safer in Gir than anywhere else.
They are confident that a census, due next month, will reveal that the lion population has risen since the last time it was counted in 2005. They say they are working to make the environment around Gir safe by covering thousands of wells and building a bypass to move traffic further from the park.
But Gujarat’s strongest argument is the Indian government’s poor record protecting the tiger, the country’s national animal since it replaced the lion in 1973.
Numbers have dropped to 1,411 today from 3,500 in the mid-nineties, largely because of poaching to meet demand for tiger parts from China.
The one case of poaching in recent years in Gir was carried out by trained tiger trappers from Madhya Pradesh, the state where the new park is located. They killed seven lions and discarded their pelts so they could pass off the body parts as those of tigers.
Thirty-eight people were arrested and Gujarati officials say there has not been another case of poaching in Gir since.
“The local communities in Madhya Pradesh have done little to conserve the tiger and now you want to sacrifice the lion there, too? For what?” Pradeep Khanna, the principal chief conservator of forests, asked.
By comparison, the majority of people around Gir are protective of the lions, which draw more than 100,000 tourists each year
“Because of the lions we have jobs; we can afford to send our children to good schools,” said Nitin Ratangayra, a local restaurant manager in Gir. “When a lion dies we are very sad.”
Like him, most of the local community opposes the relocation plan, concerned that tourists would be diverted to Madhya Pradesh if it had both lions and tigers.
Despite this, Mr Khanna said his department will comply if the Supreme Court gives a clear ruling to hand over the lions.
Wildlife activists are concerned that Gujarat will still find ways to hold on to the lions.
“In theory the Supreme Court ruling should make all the difference, but the court has made thousands of rulings which are not complied with,” said Belinda Wright of the Wildlife Protection Society of India. “They will find loopholes or appeal. This is an emotional issue for them now.”
hgardner@thenational.ae
Source: http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100331/FOREIGN/703309912/1103/NEWS
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
In one day, three leopards die in Junagadh
TNN 27 December 2009, 05:03am ISTText Size:|Topics:
AHMEDABAD:
In yet another case of infighting among big cats in Gir, a leopard was killed by a lion on the outskirts of Dalkhaniya village in Gir west recently. Officials said, the reason of the fight could not be ascertained.
In two more unnatural deaths of the spotted beast, a leopard was run over by a train while crossing an unmanned railway crossing near Gadu village in Junagadh district on Saturday.
In another case, a five-year-old female leopard was electrocuted to death in Varsinghar village of Una taluka in Junagadh district on Saturday morning. The animal got the electric shock after coming in contact with a transformer in an unused mine, sources said.
About the fight between a lion and leopard, officials said: "It could be that the lion had made an attempt to scare another big cat away. Instead, this led to a fight between the two," officials said. Range forest officer A D Atara, said pug marks and injuries on the leopard, suggest a lion was the killer.
The incident, however, gave senior forest officials a chance to reiterate their claim that just like leopard and lion cannot stay together, a tiger and lion cannot survive together in Kuno Palpur in Madhya Pradesh.
Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/flora-fauna/In-one-day-three-leopards-die-in-Junagadh/articleshow/5383240.cms
AHMEDABAD:
In yet another case of infighting among big cats in Gir, a leopard was killed by a lion on the outskirts of Dalkhaniya village in Gir west recently. Officials said, the reason of the fight could not be ascertained.
In two more unnatural deaths of the spotted beast, a leopard was run over by a train while crossing an unmanned railway crossing near Gadu village in Junagadh district on Saturday.
In another case, a five-year-old female leopard was electrocuted to death in Varsinghar village of Una taluka in Junagadh district on Saturday morning. The animal got the electric shock after coming in contact with a transformer in an unused mine, sources said.
About the fight between a lion and leopard, officials said: "It could be that the lion had made an attempt to scare another big cat away. Instead, this led to a fight between the two," officials said. Range forest officer A D Atara, said pug marks and injuries on the leopard, suggest a lion was the killer.
The incident, however, gave senior forest officials a chance to reiterate their claim that just like leopard and lion cannot stay together, a tiger and lion cannot survive together in Kuno Palpur in Madhya Pradesh.
Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/flora-fauna/In-one-day-three-leopards-die-in-Junagadh/articleshow/5383240.cms
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