![]() Large cats without any forests to call home will settle for much less. Tree cover with minimal human activity provides shelter and plenty of domestic animals offer sustenance. These have now given way to extensive orchards of mangoes meant for the export market, says Chellam. The surrounding farmlands were predominantly growing wheat in the 1960s and 70s, until irrigation made sugarcane cultivation possible in the 1980s. About 4% of the total livestock population is lost to these felines annually.Īn Asiatic lion rests in Gir forest, about 355 km (221 miles) from the western Indian city of Ahmedabad. That is inevitable when approximately 100,000 cattle, most belonging to people outside the reserve, continue to graze tantalizingly under the lions’ noses in the forests every day. But they also continue to kill some livestock. When more wild prey became available, the cats could fill their bellies, with no fear of losing their meal. However, the cats were chased away from cattle kills, so the owners could recoup some of their losses by selling the hide and meat. ![]() Whether it is beef or venison, it makes no difference to a lion. But several Maldhari families remain and livestock continue to use the forest as pasture. From living off cattle in the early days of the Project, the felines changed their diets to spotted deer, sambhar and nilgai. Easing the pressure from domestic animals allowed the vegetation to recover, and as a consequence, wild herbivores bounced back ten-fold. In 1973, the Gir Lion Project relocated almost 600 resident Maldhari families and their livestock and banished hundreds of thousands of cattle that seasonally grazed in Gir. ![]() Their frequent roars gave away their location, the plains they inhabited provided convenient access, their social habits made bagging several at a time the norm, and firearms made it all easy. In India, lions were decimated by hunters. For the last few decades, the 1,400 sq km Gir forest was known as the last refuge of a species that once ranged across north India, from the Punjab in the north, to Jharkhand in the east, to the Narmada river in the south, and as far west as northern Morocco and Greece. Asian lions have shot up in numbers from a low 50 or fewer in the early 1900s to more than 400 today. It is a rare, little-known conservation success story.
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