Hope Gir lions will flourish elsewhere too
With Monday's Supreme Court ruling, at least part of the pride of Gujarat is poised to shift to Madhya Pradesh. Some of the 400-plus lions of the Gir Forest National Park will be relocated. The move to do so had been vehemently opposed by Gujarat because the lions of Gir have been a valuable source of tourist revenue for the State and because the Government of Gujarat has invested considerable amounts to protect and promote the animals. The other reason is that the State believes the lions may not be as safe elsewhere as they have been in Gir. But now that the apex court has ruled in favour of relocation, Gujarat has to comply with the order and hope for the best for the lions. In principle, the move to have more than one location for lions in the country makes sense. An epidemic or some other catastrophe can wipe out the entire sub-species if the animals are concentrated in one region. The apprehension is valid because the lion is an endangered species according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, and any tragedy can eliminate these majestic animals in one stroke if they are located at one place. But it must be remembered that the lions have been taken care of rather well in Gujarat. The Gir reserve, from the time it was established in 1975, has set an example in the effective conservation of wildlife. The increase in the number of lions in the reserve has been such that the Gir area has now been expanded to what is known as ‘Greater Gir', and this has to a large extent addressed the strains that the burgeoning population of lions had come to cause on the original forest area. In recent years, the emphasis on the conservation of lions has seen a manifold increase. We hardly have instances of poaching, for instance, in Gir. On the other hand, forest reserves located in other States have been regularly hit by poachers, besides being burdened with poor safety features. This has seriously depleted the stock of wildlife animals such as tigers, rhinoceros and elephants, and led to a spiral adverse impact on the flora and fauna.
Given this situation, the fears expressed by conservationists that the lions being relocated out of Gujarat too could become victims of wildlife brigands and poor safety arrangements, cannot be discounted. To that extent, the relocation alone may not protect the Asiatic lions. While the Madhya Pradesh Government is committed to protecting wildlife and has done a remarkable job in reversing an earlier trend where the tiger population in its forest reserves had dipped to alarming levels, the threat still remains. According to reports, in the last few months alone, four tigers were electrocuted in the world-famous Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve. The Great One-horned Rhinoceros is facing constant attacks from poachers at the Kaziranga National Park in Assam; as do the elephants that, if they escape the scalpel of the poachers, are mowed by speeding trains as the animals move across supposedly protected elephant corridors.