CALL OF THE WILD - Gir’s lions need a second home to survive

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CALL OF THE WILD - Gir's lions need a second home to survive

 

MAHESH RANGARAJAN

 

The recent poaching of six lions for claws in the Gir forest has led

to calls for better policing and protection. The immediate response

of both the Union and the Gujarat state governments has been on

expected lines.

 

So far, so good. But what next? To learn better how to protect and

safeguard the lion, it is necessary to ask why it is a dim memory

across so much of its historic range.

 

Just two centuries ago, the species had a range across much of north

and central India. It is not widely known that later Mughal rulers

like Shah Alam II hunted lions on elephant-back in the region now

comprising Haryana. In the aftermath of the Great Rebellion of 1857,

a British officer, George Acland Smith, shot as many as 300. Of

these, over 50 were shot within a day's horse ride out of the old

imperial capital of Delhi.

 

By the turn of the earlier century, the prides that had roamed the

grasslands and the scrub jungles of the subcontinent for millennia

had vanished. Some were shot by trophy-hunters equipped with better,

long-range rifles. Others were poisoned by their owners, whose

antagonism was further fuelled by the rich bounties offered for the

great beasts by the new British rulers. The princes and maharajahs

did their share of polishing off what was left. Even before much of

its dry grassland home in the plains was converted to cultivation,

the big cat had vanished.

 

The Gir hills of the Kathiawar peninsula were one place where a few

survived. They survived, but only just. From the late 19th century,

a most unusual bond grew up between the Babi Pathan dynasty that

ruled over Junagadh and the lions of the Gir forest. Efforts to

protect them from the hunter's bullet and the poison of the irate

cattle-owner were unusual for a time when all carnivores were seen

by rulers (British or princely) as evil incarnate.

 

But about 1900, such protection is exactly what the lions got. A few

were still shot, but only large males with big manes. The lionesses

and cubs, and most of their male kin, were under formal princely

protection. When Ranji, the famous prince of Nawanagar, shot a

lioness in an adjacent range outside the territory of Junagadh, he

came under widespread criticism.

 

The engaging story is well told in a recent work by Divyabhanusinh.

The Story of Asia's Lions, as he calls it, is not merely a tale from

ages past. On not one but two occasions, the species had a brush

with the spirits. The first was at the time of independence, when

the nawab fled to Pakistan. The aarzi hukumat or people's government

under Samaldas Gandhi (a nephew of the Mahatma) had other, more

pressing tasks. But intervention by Jawaharlal Nehru, in February

1948, got the government to act. Pickets were put up, and the

protection against trigger-happy hunters remained in place. The

lions had won a lease of life.

 

Yet, Gir was more than a forest of the lions, the only ones left in

the wild in all of Asia. There was a slow-burning conflict with the

buffalo herding maldharis, a people who have long made the Gir their

home. Cultivation nibbled away the valley floors, while deer and

wild boar became increasingly rare. Predation on cattle led to

intense conflicts with people.

 

It was under president's rule in 1974 that a Gir lion project got

under way. It is largely due to the protection of the prey, predator

and the habitat that the lion and the forest staged a remarkable

recovery. Research by scholars like Ravi Chellam was to show later,

and decisively, how the lions turned from preying on buffaloes to

deer as the latter grew in number.

 

While accepting encomiums for the remarkable success story, the

government and the people of Gujarat have been deeply conscious of

how special their prides are. Nowhere else in Asia are there lions

in the wild. In the pre-independence period, the rulers of Junagadh

and a few adjoining states took great pride and joy in " their "

lions. Already by the time Nehru sent his urgent telegram to the

local administration, Gujaratis in cities like Ahmedabad were seeing

the lion as a distinctive symbol of their region. About a quarter

century later, it was also declared the state animal of Gujarat.

 

Therein lies the nub of today's problem. The name for the lion in

India is not the Asian lion (as elsewhere in the world) or the

Indian lion (as often described before 1972, when it was displaced

by the tiger as the national animal). It is known simply as the Gir

lion.

 

The problem is that the very regional pride that has helped save the

animals has now become a hindrance to their future. Nowhere is this

as clear as in the near total opposition to relocating a small

number of lions to a second home in central India's Kuno wildlife

sanctuary.

 

One of Narendra Modi's predecessors, Shankersinh Vagehla, once told

a journalist that he would not even part with a single lion cub, let

alone a lion. Since then, attitudes have hardened. The Gujarat

government is considering the re-introduction of lions in the Barda

hills in the Saurashtra peninsula. It is, however, not willing to

consider parting with a few lions for a second home outside the

state.

 

Regionalism, once a valued ally, can also be immune to reason. The

lions of Gir are vulnerable to epidemics like tick fever that

resulted in the death of over a thousand lions in Tanzania's famous

Serengeti in the early Nineties.

 

Neither a chief ministerial visit, as Narendra Modi's within days of

the recent poaching incidents, nor the newly established Wild- life

Crime Cell will be of much help were a disease to strike the lions.

 

If anything, Gujarat could take a leaf out of the pages of another

state known for its regional nationalism: Assam. A small number of

rhinos translocated to Dudwa in Uttar Pradesh helped repopulate a

part of their range.

 

The lions of Gir do not just face threats from poachers. Their

habitat needs protection. The Vanishing Herds Foundation, funded by

expatriate Gujaratis has done commendable work in covering wells

that often become death traps. The Gir Wildlife Club has mobilized

youngsters along the rim of the forest to become nature-lovers. Yet,

the easing of restrictions on vehicle entry to pilgrimage sites in

the forest, like the famous Kankai Mata temple, disturb the habitat.

 

Above all, the saga of the Gir lions raises a question that lies at

the very heart of conservation. Protection of rare fauna or

landscapes, the lions of Gir or the rhinos of Assam, has often

gained from regionalism. There are examples of this in other nation-

states. The gorillas of Rwanda, for instance, were safe even in the

fratricidal civil war of the mid-Nineties.

 

Yet, that very sense of regional pride can be the cause of a fall.

In the case of the last of Asia's lions, there is little doubt that

a second home will ensure their survival. Gir will always be their

first home. It need not be their only one.

 

The last century saw not one but two remarkable conservation success

stories with the lions. It is time to launch a new venture, one that

gives them not just a second habitat but also the guarantee of

survival.

 

The author is an independent researcher whose most recent work is an

edited volume, Environmental Issues in India