15-year-old lioness dies at Renuka zoo.

By: Express News Service | Shimla | Published on:March 4, 2015 6:49 pm

A 15-year-old lioness, Mamta, died of uterus infection on Tuesday at Renuka zoo, leaving behind her male partner.
The wildlife officials said that Mamta was suffering from the infection for quite sometime and veterinarians attending to her had advised removal of the uterus which exhibited signs of pus accumulation. The surgery could not be carried out on the animal because of her old age and other health reasons, besides being a poor subject for anesthesia.
Renuka is nearly 40 km from Nahan, headquarter of Sirmaur district bordering Uttrakhand. It was once considered as the best breeding centre for Afro-Asiatic lions in Himachal Pradesh.
Confirming the death, Himachal’s Chief Wildlife Warden J S Walia said preliminary findings of the postmortem conducted on Mamta revealed excessive accumulation of pus in the uterus and also abdominal cavity . “Excess pus led to the failure of the immune system of the animal,” he said.
Walia said cremation of the animal was done later in the day in presence of designated committee. But before this, necessary samples were also drawn and sent to the disease Investigation Lab in Shimla for detailed analysis.
Now, with Mamta’s death, there is only one lioness left in the state’s oldest zoo, set-up in 1959 in the Renuka wildlife sanctuary in Sirmaur district. But, this lioness, say senior wildlife officials, also suffers from the inbreeding problem, which had led to wipe out the entire population of more than two dozen lions/lioness at the Zoo in mid-nineties. The other zoo at Gopalpur near Palampur (Kangra) also has only one lion .
“It’s more than a decade back, the breeding programme at the zoo was stopped because of inbreeding problem. Efforts are made to revive the programme by inducting some progenies,” said Walia.
“We have taken-up the matter with central zoo authority to provide some new animals/cubs from other zoos so that some attraction could be added to the centre, and breeding programme should be revived. The problem however remains that lions are not available in other zoos also,” said Walia.
Still, the wildlife department has got in touch with officials at ChattBir Zoo to get two cubs for Renuka zoo as authorities feel that the single male there will no survive long left alone.
Officials here informed that Gir forest national park and wildlife sanctuary is perhaps the only place for where Asiatic lions and tigers have coexisted and shown a rise in population.

Threat back to haunt Gir lions as forest department again allows safaris.

Darshan Desai  Ahmedabad, March 4, 2015 | UPDATED 11:55 IST

The state forest department had cut down lion safaris from 90 to 45 trips a day at Gir sanctuary to ensure that the habitat is not disturbed.Succumbing to pressure from the tourism department of the Gujarat government, which had spent a fortune getting superstar Amitabh Bachchan to promote tourism with his Khushboo Gujarat Ki campaign, the forest department has once again allowed lion safaris, which it had cut down to half to ensure no disturbance to the only abode of the Asiatic lion in Gir forests.
It was after a farmer blocked a lion safari route alleging that the tourist vehicles took a dirt-track through his mango orchard into the forests that the forest department had stopped issuing spot permits to lion safaris to crisscross the region.
The farmer's orchard was one entry point for the lion safari. With this being blocked, the safari traffic had to be diverted to another entry-point on the Sasan Gir-Talala road. However, it created more problems.
"The tourist traffic was getting unmanageable and so we decided to reduce the permits to half, but there is little we can do now with pressure from the highest echelons of power," a senior forest department official told MAIL TODAY on the condition of anonymity.

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Sources said the tourism wing of the Gujarat government was upset with this and put pressure on the forest department to find a way out. "We were virtually forced to start issuing safari permits to tourists but we are changing and re-aligning the routes of the vehicles passing through the jungle," the official revealed.
A wildlife activist, who did a sting operation on a tourist group on his mobile phone, said tourists don't know how to conduct themselves in a forest sanctuary. The sting operation shows a group of tourists scaring away a lion by driving down their SUV vehicle towards the carnivore who was enjoying his day's kill.
Most of such tourists stay in illegal hotels and guest houses in and around the lion sanctuary. It was after an anonymous letter to the Gujarat High Court, which it converted into a public interest litigation, the state government admitted that as many as 66 hotels and guest houses ran their business without proper clearances. Subsequently, an investigation by MAIL TODAY got the authorities into action and the sealing of these hotels is in progress.
"The situation has gone beyond control and lions are bound to stray with increasing interference into their habitat. The only solution is to re-locate some of the lions to other habitats," says A.K. Sharma, a retired forest official, who is credited for rescuing lions from poachers in the 1990s. Sharma was awarded with the Kirti Chakra for his work in Gir forests.
Nationally renowned lion expert Ravi Chellam told MAIL TODAY, "The big conservation action that has not been taken so far is to comply with the Supreme Court judgment regarding the translocation of lions to establish a second free-ranging population of lions. This is an urgent and necessary issue."

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/gir-lions-safari-gujarat-forest-department/1/422119.html

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/gir-lions-safari-gujarat-forest-department/1/422119.html

Renowned ornithologist K.S. Lavkumar Khachar dies at 84.

 http://www.livemint.com/Politics/aeaqOJWJlPyRXhHrS2oGyI/Ornithologist-KS-Lavkumar-Khachar-dies.html

Gujarat cuts lion safaris in Gil forest by half after farmer's one-man protest.

By Darshan Desai

Published: 23:02 GMT, 2 March 2015 | Updated: 23:02 GMT, 2 March 2015

It began with an anonymous letter to the Gujarat High Court about the mushrooming of illegal hotels and guest houses in and around the Gir lion sanctuary. 

But now, a farmer’s effort has finally bore fruit as the Gujarat government has reduced the number of safaris from 90 to 45 a day in the lion sanctuary. 

Mail Today had highlighted the proliferation of illegal hotels, farmhouses and guest houses around the sanctuary, causing disturbance at the only abode of Asiatic lions. 

The forest department has reduced the number of lion safaris in Gir sanctuary from 90 to 45 a day

The court had converted the letter into a suo motu petition, and the state government had to accept through an affidavit that 66 illegal structures were operating in Gir-Somnath, Junagadh and Amreli districts. 

The Gujarat HC then directed the state government to halt all activities there if the property owners did not submit mandatory permissions. 

It was in February that farmer Naran Solanki blocked entry to Bhambhafod forest check-post after he found that the dirt track, on which the tourism department’s lion safari vehicles plied through, was encroaching his agricultural land which actually is a mango orchard. 

Solanki says: “I own the land and often requested the authorities to remove encroachments on part of it while the remaining space was used for the lion safaris.” 

When no action took place despite his repeated requests, Solanki decided to block the lion safari route for tourists. 

This forced the tourism department to try out another entry point to the Gir forest, but this did not last long as the forest department denied spot permissions for lion safaris on that route.

Eventually, the forest department was forced to cut the number of lion safaris for tourists from 90 to 45 a day. 

“The move has also helped reduce disturbance to lions that have been straying out of the forest for some years,” a forest department official said. 

According to the official: “The tourist traffic was making things difficult at one entry point and this is why we reduced the number of permissions for lion safaris. 

"The Gujarat government may have had superstar Amitabh Bachchan with his ‘Khushboo Gujarat ki’ campaign, but this added to the number of tourists, many of whom just have no idea how to behave in a wildlife sanctuary.” 

According to the forest department, tourists coming to Sasan Gir without prior online permission are being diverted to Gir Interpretation Zone at Devaliya. 

Gir Interpretation Zone is a safari park near Sasan Gir, where a few Asiatic lions and other wild animals are kept in captivity for tourists. 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2976218/Gujarat-cuts-lion-safaris-Gil-forest-half-farmer-s-one-man-protest.html

Spot permissions restored for lion safaris in Gir forest.

By: Express News Service | Rajkot | Published on:March 2, 2015 9:11 pm

The Gujarat forest department has resumed to give spot permissions for lion safaris in the Gir National Park and Wildlife Sanctuary (GNPWS), at Sasan Gir in Junagadh district after realigning some routes.
“We had stopped issuing spot permissions as there were some issues with alignment of safari routes. But they have been sorted out now by realigning some routes. We resumed giving spot permissions from February 27 onward,” Sandeep Kumar, deputy conservator of forest (wildlife) of Sasan Gir and superintendent of NGPWS told The Indian Express on Monday.
The forest department was forced to stop issuing spot permissions for safaris as a farmer blocked way to Bhambhafod check-post, one of the two entry-points for Safari vehicles.

Related

• Forest dept halves number of Gir lion safaris
• Government begins survey to identify unauthorised hotels near Gir sanctuary
• Get ready for lion safari experience in Amreli grasslands

The farmer had blocked the way in early February saying the dirt track leading to the Bhambhafod check-post was crossing his private land. As a result, the safari traffic had to be diverted to another entry-point on Sasan Gir-Talala road.
The chief conservator of forest (wildlife) of Junagadh division had told The Indian Express that due to the blockade, safari traffic had become unmanageable and therefore they had stopped issuing spot permissions from third week of February.
This move had halved the number of daily safaris. The only way to go on a safari in GNPWS was to get a prior permission of forest department by applying online.
However, the DCF said that spot permissions had been restored. The forest department issues 45 spot permissions and equal number of online permissions daily, allowing tourists to watch Asiatic lions in their only natural home in the wild.

http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/spot-permissions-restored-for-lion-safaris-in-gir-forest/

Forest dept halves number of Gir lion safaris.

Monday, Mar 30, 2015

By: Express News Service | Rajkot | Published on:March 2, 2015 5:44 am

so far,” Singh said.
The CCF added that he had one more time requested Junagadh collector to find out some solution to the problem so that tourism industry at Sasan Gir is not affected adversely.
After the forest department stopped giving spot permissions, Sasan Gypsy Association threatened to go on strike.
The only wild population of Asiatic lions in the world is surviving in Gir forest and protected areas spread across Junagadh, Gir-Somnath, Amreli and Bhavnagar districts in Saurashtra region of Gujarat. The 2010 census had estimated population of Asiatic lions to be 411.
After the Khushboo Gujarat Ki advertisement campaign by Gujarat Tourism Department, number of tourists visiting Sasan Gir have shot up many fold. More than four lakh tourists had visited the sanctuary in year 203-14.

http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/ahmedabad/forest-dept-halves-number-of-gir-lion-safaris/2/

Artificial ponds backed by wind mills and solar pumps for lions in Gir forest.

http://deshgujarat.com/2015/03/01/artificial-ponds-backed-by-wind-mills-and-solar-pumps-for-lions-in-gir-forest/

Gujarat forest department used only half its lion funds.

 By Himanshu Kaushik, TNN | 28 Feb, 2015, 05.00PM IST

AHMEDABAD: If the figures tabled in the state assembly are to be believed, the government has spent less than 50% of the grants allocated to lion conservation in 2014-2015.

The state government allocated 43.95 crore in the financial year 2014-15 for lion conservation, but the forest department has only spent Rs 21.57 crore. The state government divulged this in reply to a question by Visavadar MLA Harshad Rabadiya. The state government said the government had released 43.95% crore till January 31, 2015 but the department utilized only Rs 21.57 crore, or 49% of the funds released.

However, the government has not revealed what was the grant was released and what it was used for. The officials said that the majority of funds were utilized for purchase of rescue equipment and for treatment of the rescued animals.

Meanwhile, to another question the government replied that 10 Asiatic lions have been transferred to zoos in various parts of the country. The government in response to Amreli MLA Paresh Dhanani said that the 10 lions were sent to zoos for the long term conservation of Asiatic lions and to educate people on the Asiatic lion. The big cats were transferred with permission from the competent authority and as part of the zoo exchange programme.

During the recent Vibrant Gujarat summit, the forest department inked an MOU to send the Asiatic lions from a zoo here to one in the Czech Republic. The Gujarat government had approved the proposal to give the lions to the Czech government. The lions to transferred will not be taken from the Gir forest but from Sakkarbaug Zoo in Junagadh.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/environment/flora-fauna/gujarat-forest-department-used-only-half-its-lion-funds/articleshow/46410954.cms