In search of new homes

The Asiatic lions could be settling in a new territory outside their protected turf in Gujarat, at least so it seems. On March 16, a lion was spotted lounging by the roadside near the airport on Diu island, which is part of the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu. Forest officials say the animal might have wandered off from Gujarat’s Gir forests, the only place in the world where Asiatic lions (Panthera leo leo) can be seen roaming freely in the wild. Earlier in February, the Gujarat forest department captured two male lions from Diu and drove them back to their habitat. In fact, there have been at least 10 such instances in the past six months, when the forest department had to bring back lions from Diu after complaints from local authorities.

DT Vasavada, former chief conservator of forests, Junagarh wildlife circle, which is part of the Gir protected forest area, says that the Diu island borders the Gir national park and wildlife sanctuary and is separated from the mainland only by a tidal creek. The lions thus tend to swim across when the tide is low. “Habitation territory of wildlife does not conform to political borders. So for the lions, Diu island is a contiguous landscape of their territory,” says AP Singh, principal chief conservator of forests, Gujarat. Some conservationists and rese archers, however, say the freq uent sightings of lions in Diu indicate the Gir protected area has reached its carrying capacity for the animal.

Asiatic lions, a sub-species of Panthera leo, once roamed large parts of Asia, from Mesopotamia to Arabia to the Indian subcontinent. During the 18th century, the animal was extirpated from all the ranges, with only about a dozen surviving in the Gir forests at the turn of the 19th century. In the 1990s, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) categorised the species as “critically endangered” on its Red List of Threatened Species. A concerted effort to protect the animal began with the setting up of Gir National Park and wildlife sanctuary over 1,412 sq km, in 1965. Another 470 sq km of forest patches form a buffer zone, bringing the total protected area to 1,882 sq km. Today in a roaring conservation success story, Gujarat boasts of 674 Asiatic lions that can be seen roaming both inside and outside the protected areas across 30,000 sq km, spanning 53 talukas in nine districts of the Saurashtra peninsula, shows the latest lion census by the Gujarat forest department in 2020. Since 2008, IUCN has downlisted Asiatic lion to “endangered” category owing to the population increase.

Kausik Banerjee, lead specialist at International Big Cat Alliance, a coalition of 95 big-cat range countries, tells Down To Earth (DTE), “If the lion population in upcoming census in 2025 reaches close to 1,000, it can be a viable population and the risks of local extinction would shrink further.”

What’s concerning is that this increase in lion numbers is occurring outside the Gir national park and wildlife sanctuary. The 2020 lion census shows that between 2015 and 2020, the lion population inside forested areas has decreased from 356 to 345, while their number has nearly doubled outside forested areas—from 167 to 329. “The lions have been venturing out of Gir forests for a few decades now,” says Stotra Chakrabarti, assistant professor of biology at Macalester College, Minnesota, US, who has done extensive research on Asiatic lions. Initially, sightings of the wild cats in human-dominated areas were reported as unusual.

But since the 1990s, the frequency of lions recolonising areas outside protected forests has increased. There are now resident populations outside the protected forests and even in the thorn scrub of the coastal areas. For instance, lion populations have colonised coastal villages such as Mul Dwarka in Junagadh district since 1995 and Una town in Gir Somnath district in the 2000s. They can also be easily spotted in coastal towns like Kodinar in Gir Somnath district and Rajula and Jafrabad in Amreli district. “Diu is about 20 km from Una. Sighting a lion in that landscape is thus not surprising,” Chakrabarti says.

Chaitanya Joshi, a resident of Gujarat who has studied lions for over three decades, explains the other attractions for lions in Diu. Lions hunt during the night and use thickets, farmlands and the vegetation between them, such as shrubs, for refuge and rest during the day. In Diu, invasive plant species such as Prosopis juliflora and Acacia senegal form pockets of dense vegetation, which serve as an ideal hideout for lions. Moreover, prey such as Nilgai and wild pigs are abundant in the region making it an attractive bait for the big cat to venture into the island, says Joshi.

Ravi Chellam, chief executive officer at Metastring Foundation and coordinator of Biodiversity Collaborative, both headquartered in Bengaluru, says, “Territories are established by individual animals or coalition of males and pride females. In this case, the Asiatic lion as a whole is extending its geographical distribution. The wild cats may well be reclaiming their former lands as they were much more widely distributed 150 to 200 years ago,” he says. Such instances of the lion spreading its territory clearly shows the need for a wider geographic range for the existing population, says Chellam. He highlights the 2013 Supreme Court judgement that ordered trans-location of Asiatic lions to other suitable habitats outside Gujarat, such as to Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh, due to concerns expressed by scientists and conservationists that the presence of all members of a sub-species in a single geographic area makes them vulnerable to many threats including mass mortality in case of a disease outbreak or epidemic.

However, the programme met with resistance, including from the state board for wildlife and some local residents. Meanwhile, a 2019 study published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution finds that 30 per cent of the 228 lion mortalities recorded between 2007 and 2019 were caused by diseases.

The researchers DTE spoke to say that the risk of mortality from disease outbreaks or forest fire would greatly reduce if the Asiatic lions establish territory in a satellite habitat, such as Diu, breed and give rise to a new population. An expert, on condition of anonymity, says, “Perhaps lions are not being allowed to settle in Diu as Gujarat wants to continue to hold the pride of having the only Asiatic lions.”

Lions have made a phenomenal recovery in Gujarat, supported by state protection and local attitudes. Continuing to resolve conflicts and community engagement are priorities for safeguarding conservation of lions on a landscape scale, says Chakrabarti.

This was first published in the 1-15 April, 2025 print edition of Down To Earth