New Delhi, Mar 27 (PTI) A total of 669 Asiatic lions have died in the last five years, but none due to poaching, the government told Parliament on Thursday.
The Gir forest in Gujarat is the only remaining natural habitat of Asiatic lions.
In a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha, Union Minister of State for Environment Kirti Vardhan Singh said 142 lions died in 2020, 124 in 2021, 117 in 2022, 121 in 2023 and 165 in 2024.
“As reported by the (Gujarat) state government, the reported causes of lion deaths include old age, illness, injuries from fights, cub mortality, falling into open wells, electrocution, accidents etc.,” Singh said.
He also said no incidents of poaching led to lion deaths during these years.
The most recent estimate in June 2020 put the Asiatic lion population in Gujarat at 674, up from 523 in 2015.
A fresh population estimation will be conducted in May.
In February, Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav told the Upper House that there is a sufficient prey base for lions in Gir and that the population of prey animals has been increasing.
Over the years, experts have called for the translocation of lions in India, as the big cats remain geographically isolated in Gir. A second habitat would help protect them from extinction in case of an epidemic, a sharp decline in prey or natural disasters.
In September 2018, 27 lions in Gir died due to canine distemper virus (CDV), while 37 had to be quarantined.
A document from the Gujarat chief wildlife warden’s office shows that the lions’ distribution area expanded from 22,000 sq. km in 2015 to 30,000 sq. km in 2020.
A 2022 scientific report in the Nature journal revealed that 48 per cent of the then lion population of 674 had moved outside protected areas, covering nine districts and 13 forest administrative divisions.
In 2013, the Supreme Court directed the government to translocate Asiatic lions from Gujarat to the Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh within six months. However, nearly a decade later, cheetahs were introduced in Kuno from Africa as part of the world’s first intercontinental translocation of big cats.
In December 2022, former minister of state for environment Ashwini Kumar Choubey informed the Rajya Sabha that the Wildlife Institute of India had identified the Barda Wildlife Sanctuary, about 100 km from the Gir National Park, as a “potential site where a population of 40 adult and sub-adult lions could be accommodated within the larger landscape of Barda-Alech hills and coastal forests through natural dispersal”.
The Gujarat forest department also runs a breeding centre for herbivores in the Barda sanctuary to increase the prey base for lions. PTI GVS RC
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