It is not often that conservationists, during times when pursuit of a frenzied double-digit growth is a national obsession, find something to cheer about. The Supreme Court order of Monday asking Gujarat to translocate Asiatic lions to Madhya Pradesh will come across as something that happens once in a blue moon. For those wildlife conservationists campaigning for the process, this is good news indeed.
The apex court felt that the lions should have a second home especially if an epidemic or forest fires were to wipe out the endangered species from its Gir habitat. The Asiatic lion exists as a single isolated population, numbering some 400-odd individuals, all occurring within one subpopulation (but in four separate areas, three of which are outside the Gir National Park). The translocation project will have to be completed within six months.
But why was this imperative need to translocate the lions at all? Vivek Menon, CEO of the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), explains, "Asiatic lions are found only in Gujarat, and face a very potent threat that can be summarised as ‘all-eggs (or felines rather)-in-one-basket’ syndrome. It's not very difficult to imagine that any disease or other disaster striking such a population could mean wiping away of this entire sub-species from the face of the earth. Creating sub-populations through translocation to other potential lion areas are the only viable way to ensure that this risk is addressed."
This concern, in fact, is also underlined by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as the top threat confronting the species. The Asiatic lion was once found throughout South-West Asia, but is today confined to the Gir forests of Gujarat. The IUCN Red List, in its "conservation action" section, goes on to outline :
Establishment of at least one other wild population is advisable for population safety, for maximizing genetic diversity, and in terms of ecology (re-establishing the lion as a component of the fauna in its former range). However, there are problems in attempting this: a previous attempt to establish a second subpopulation in the Chandraprabha Wildlife Sanctuary in eastern Uttar Pradesh appeared to be succeeding, as the population grew from three to 11 animals, but then the lions disappeared, presumably shot or poisoned. Palpur-Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary in northern Madhya Pradesh has now been selected as the best candidate area. Communities will require resettlement to make room for the lions, but this time great care is being taken to make the process participatory and to attempt to satisfy local needs, and not engender hostility toward lion conservation.
The Asiatic lion has been declassified by IUCN as "Critically Endangered" and relabelled "Endangered", thanks to the conservation measures undertaken in Gir over decades that pulled out the lion from the brink of sureshot extinction. But that alone, of course, does not mean that the species faces no danger today at all. And that's what the case was all about.
The Supreme Court order, in effect, also frees the Asiatic lion from the stranglehold of the Narendra Modi government in Gujarat. The Modi regime had tooth and nail, consistently and belligerently at that, thwarted and opposed every attempt to re-introduce an Asiatic lion population elsewhere on the pretext that the species was the pride of Gujarat. As if it wasn't the country's. Moreover, the Modi government had repeatedly scoffed at the contention that the wild population of the lions has grown from just 13 individuals, and is therefore reckoned to be highly inbred. In simple words, it is an extremely vulnerable population.
The Supreme Court has also rejected the Gujarat contention that since Madhya Pradesh had apparently failed to protect its tigers in Panna National Park, the lions from Gir may meet the same fate in the state. Beyond a point, the Modi government's opposition had little to do with conservationist concerns and had more to do with political posturing. Whether Modi makes an issue out of it would need a different canvas altogether.
But broadly speaking, the court order has other conservation implications too. Says Menon, "India has the necessary expertise to carry out translocation of (wild) animals. We have done so for tigers and rhinos, most popularly. And those species are less threatened as compared to the Asiatic lions. For these lions, this judgment is absolutely critical, and we are glad that this has come about now."
And, so are many others.
