Economic drivers for communities, co-benefits of abandoned cattle for lions behind delicate human-lion co-existence in Gujarat, finds new study

Lions, on the other hand, have benefitted on two key counts. With greater human acceptance, they can move around outside Gir’s protected areas. Second, owing to legal and cultural practices, old cattle are abandoned, which forms a big chunk of the big cat’s diet in the form of old livestock or carrion. The data analysed for the study published in Conservation Biology was from the 2012-2017 period, although it mapped changes in lion range and population for a long period.

The co-existence comes in the backdrop of the geographic range of lions rising by 36 per cent between 2015 and 2020 and population increasing at 6 per cent per annum.

This co-existence, though, is delicately poised, the research found, and conservation management interventions are necessary to mitigate conflict and protect lions too. Since economic drivers played an important role in co-existence, the researchers recommended that the livestock compensation scheme should be revised regularly to make it at par with market values and said that a livestock insurance scheme should be explored.

Gujarat is the only home of the Asiatic Lions and calls to partially move them outside the state, including orders of the Supreme Court, have not been implemented. Conservationists have called for their translocation to neighbouring Madhya Pradesh to improve genetic exchange in the source population and as a guardrail against disease and widespread infections.

To reduce attacks on humans and livestock, the study prescribed that lion prides in risk hotspots should be monitored proactively, using radio collars that have virtual geofences that can trigger warning signals. This, the study said, can pre-empt lion movement and mitigate negative human-lion interactions.

“The lions and communities are co-adapting to co-exist. And benefits to each other, lions and people, exceed the costs of living together, resulting in co-existence,” said Y V Jhala, who co-conceptualised the study. Keshab Gogoi, Kaushik Banerjee, and Stotra Chakrabarti of the Wildlife Institute of India, Anirudh Pratap Singh of the Gujarat Forest Department, and senior scientist Y V Jhala authored the study.

At the outset, the researchers had hypothesized that people facing higher conflicts with lions would be less tolerant towards them. However, a survey of 1,424 people from 277 villages revealed that people belonging to “high-and moderate-conflict villages” were more tolerant of lions than villages with no conflict. This was closely linked to economic drivers such as losses for pastoralist communities whereas some tolerated it more because their incomes depended on informal and illegal wildlife tourism.

“Among people with different occupational backgrounds, pastoralists had the highest intolerance of lions. When we further examined the reasons, we found that tolerant people liked lions for perceived qualities of nobility and charisma, feeling of pride in having lions in their area, and due to economic benefits derived from lions,” the study stated.

Amreli district saw the largest livestock death claims, followed by Junagadh, Gir Somnath, and Bhavnagar. Most of the livestock were killed outside the legally protected areas (91 per cent) and cattle, followed by goats, sheep, and buffalo were the most killed livestock, as per the study.