Science Trumps Politics

Lions may or may not thrive in Kuno, but it is their only chance for a secure future

Tehelka, 19 April, 2013

One summer evening seven years ago at Kanha in Madhya Pradesh, an elderly naturalist signalled the end of a long discussion on the usual malaises plaguing conservation with a rhetorical “will-things-ever-change” flourish. Pat came the reply from a deadpan officer: “When lions come to Kuno.” Most of us were in splits.

Even by Indian standards, the Lion Reintroduction Project (LRP) dragged on for so long that even the brass in the Ministry of Environment and Forests gave up on it. It was far back in 1990 that the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) sought to create a second wild population of Asiatic lions to safeguard the species against potential calamities in Gujarat’s Gir National Park. A comparative analysis of potential sites was done in 1993 and Palpur-Kuno sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh was found to be the most suitable for lions.

But the plan to shift two small prides, starting with two males and three females, from Gir never took off. In 2007, Project Tiger and the Central Zoo Authority, resigned to the fate that the Narendra Modi government would never spare a single Gir lion, floated an alternative plan to take zoo animals with pure Asiatic strains to Kuno for “wilding” them over three generations.

Around the same time, a Delhi-based NGO challenged the Gujarat government’s stand at the Supreme Court. After seven long years, the apex court passed a landmark judgment this week, setting a six-month deadline for shifting the first batch of lions. It also scrapped the plan to import African cheetahs as “illegal and arbitrary”.

The judgment is historic not because it ensures a secure future for the Asiatic lions. In the past, similar attempts have failed miserably. In the beginning of the last century, the Gwalior royalty imported African lions and reared them in brick enclosures in the jungles of Sheopur near Kuno. Once released, the animals targeted cattle and people alike and had to be put down.

Then in 1957, three Asiatic lions were introduced in the Chandraprabha sanctuary near Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh. Subsequently, at least six cubs were born in this pride. But by late 1960s, the Chandraprabha lions were wiped out due to hunting and retaliatory killing by local villagers.

Of course, the Kuno authorities can deter the poachers, who anyway are not too keen on lions, with better surveillance. They may incentivise and sensitise the local communities to lower the potential for conflict. But there is no guessing how the translocated lions will behave. They may settle down to focus on the abundant prey available in the sanctuary. They may walk out of the core area and target village livestock and villagers.

Despite these odds at Kuno, the Gir lions are no safer at home. Tanzania’s Serengeti lost 30 percent of its lion population to canine distemper that infected nearly 80 percent of the population in the mid-1990s. In much smaller Gir, where the Asiatic prides are jostling for space, such an epidemic can wipe out the species. Anyway, spillover animals from Gir are wandering far and wide, fuelling man-animal conflict, which is not good news in a state where lions have thrived on exceptional goodwill so far.

Be it at Kuno in Madhya Pradesh or Barda (Porbandar) in Gujarat, the process of building a second or a third wild stock will always be fraught with uncertainties. But it is still the only option for any long-term viability of the Asiatic lion. Gujarat’s refusal to send a few animals to Madhya Pradesh in the name of Gujarati asmita (pride) or maintaining the exclusivity of the Gir population has been criminally myopic. The Supreme Court judgment is historic because it uphold science over political and parochial brinkmanship.

The six-month deadline, however, seems too tight as Madhya Pradesh has to strengthen the logistics and infrastructure at Kuno before it can receive lions. Also, the expected focus on lions now at Kuno should not abandon tigers from the sanctuary that lies at the heart of the central Indian tiger landscape. Let the two big cats decide if and how they will share the forests.