The footage of a pack of eight lions taking a midnight stroll in the streets of a Gujarat village on Thursday is not the first evidence of the animals entering a human habitat. In recent years, several reports — including videos that have gone viral — have documented the presence of the big cats in areas outside Gir National Park’s boundaries. On paper, the protected area is the only natural home to the Asiatic Lions. But lions are increasingly being spotted at places 100 km away from the predominantly dry deciduous forests, reportedly even in Gujarat’s coastal areas.
It’s often held that, unlike leopards, lions and tigers tend to keep away from humans. But animals are also known to adapt, and even change their ways drastically. Forests in most parts of the country have never been free of human activity, and the unsuitability of the American wildlife science concept of pristine reserves became apparent almost immediately after it was applied to the Indian context. In Gir, for instance, the lions have shared space with the Maldhari pastoralists. Years of exposure to humans means that the lions in Gir do not display the reticence that the shy big cat theory presupposes. That said, the big cats are also territorial, and they like to keep to their range in shady riverine habitats in the hot arid forests. Why are they then being spotted in villages, on fields and roads, or even beaches?
The charismatic animal once roamed the forests in areas stretching from West Asia, going northward to parts of Turkey, and the eastern fringes of Bengal. But rampant hunting by colonial officials and feudal princelings drove the lion to near extinction. By the late 19th century, the animal’s domain had shrunk to about 1,400 sq km of the Gir forests — then the private hunting reserve of the Junagadh ruler. Famines, including the Great Gujarat Famine of the 1890s, also took their toll. Ecologists estimate that there were scarcely 20 lions left by the early decades of the 20th century. After nearly six decades of conservation, the numbers have gone up to nearly 700. This has created new kinds of problems, including those related to the carrying capacity of Gir.
Carrying capacity is a complex concept in wildlife sciences. It accounts for the ability of an ecosystem to satisfy an animal’s need for food, water, and mates and allow it to keep up its idiosyncrasies — territoriality for example. A male lion’s range stretches from about 150 to 230 sq km; that of a female is about 65 to 85 sq km. A pack of three or four males usually lives in a territory with one or two pride of about 10-12 females. The two do not associate other than two months of mating during October and November. Adult lions regularly banish their kin when they sense the possibility of competition. The young cubs must then seek out new territories and form new associations.
Experts believe that Gir does not have the space to accommodate this trait of its expanding lion population. But carrying capacity is a poorly understood concept in India’s wildlife policy circles, which, even now, tend to associate the success of conservation solely with increasing the population of an endangered species. This approach has, no doubt, resulted in notable successes and several charismatic species have been rescued from the brink. It can’t, however, deal with the new problem of rising numbers of ecological dislocates — the lions captured on video on Thursday could be among them. India’s wildlife policy hasn’t addressed the big follow-up question — what to do when conservation successes make animals compete with humans.
Ensuring the well-being of the growing animal population has been bedevilled by a host of complications, including developmental policies and infrastructural projects such as roads and highways that often tear apart wildlife habitats. But much of what is happening with the Gir lions has to do with a state government that seems to love the big cats so much that the thought of letting go of some of them from the congested environs of Gir is abhorrent. So even as lions have spilled over to villages, attacked domestic animals, and got run over by trains, Gujarat has continued to resist transferring some of its big cats to Kuno — a sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh that was found to be lion-appropriate and is now home to cheetahs from Namibia. A second batch of the animals from Africa will arrive in Kuno tomorrow.
The state government’s intransigence goes back nearly 30 years. Meanwhile, disease has stalked Gir’s pride. Overcrowded areas are rife with pathogens with close to 200 lions perishing in the last five years. It led experts to alert authorities as to what happened to the African cousins of the Gir lions when an epidemic wiped out more than a third of the animal’s population at the Serengeti National Park.
But in recent times, wildlife conservation has had to factor in considerations that have little to do with science. Many of India’s protected areas are sites of human-wildlife conflicts. The video that went viral on Thursday could be a warning that from being the pride of Gujarat, the Gir lion could become a menace to its people.
kaushik.dasgupta@expressindia.com
