Bengaluru: Today, August 10, is World Lion Day. 

At an event to celebrate the day at Gujarat’s Barda Wildlife Sanctuary, Union environment minister Bhupender Yadav and Gujarat chief minister Bhupender Patel were the main dignitaries on the dais. 

“Today we say with great pride that if anyone wants to see the Asiatic lion, they have to come to Gir in Gujarat,” Yadav said, commenting on the increase in lion numbers (from 284 in 1990) to 891 in 2025 – the latter recorded during the latest lion census undertaken by the state government this year.

Per the Census and the event of August 10, Barda is now the ‘second home’ of the Asiatic lion; 17 lions currently live in Barda. On August 10, the Gujarat CM also announced funding of Rs.180 crore to develop the new habitats for lions in the state.

An increase in lion numbers, a new home for lions, and funds to the tune of Rs.180 crore – all paint a glowing picture of India and its Asiatic lions. But how are India’s lions really doing?

Conservationists are not very impressed. 

Scientists told The Wire that while the Asiatic lion population in Gujarat may have indeed risen, the use of out-dated and flawed methodology in the latest lion census means that its findings need to be taken with a dollop of salt.

Meanwhile, even though Gujarat is setting up a ‘second home’ in the state for lions at Barda Wildlife Sanctuary, this will not be ideal because it is just around 100 km from Gir, biologists told The Wire. And Gujarat still refuses to part with its lion prides. Despite a Supreme Court order in 2013 that some lions should be relocated into Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh, nothing has moved. While cheetahs have come into Kuno all the way from Africa, India’s Asiatic lions still do not have a home in another state in their own country.

This could affect their survival. With the entire population of Asiatic lions being located exclusively in Gujarat, a single disease outbreak could easily wipe them out, biologists say. News reports have recorded a few recent lion deaths too.

A looming threat

Single population species – or species that survive in only one natural population in a single, isolated geographic area – are at a huge risk of extinction. A prime reason: disease. 

A single major disease outbreak – such as a virus – could wipe out such isolated single populations of species very quickly, coupled with other existing threats such as persecution by people, climate change and habitat loss.

These fears are justified because this has happened in the past. The Christmas Island Rat, a rat native to the Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean and found only there is thought to have gone extinct between 1898 and 1908, after contracting parasitic protozoans called trypanosomes from black rats (that came to the island accidentally as stowaways on expedition ships).

The Asiatic lion which dwells in Gujarat, however, is technically not a separate species of lion from their cousins in Africa. They’re a separate sub-species: which means they are not different enough to be called a different species, but distinct enough – both physically and genetically – to be a different sub-species. And Gujarat’s Gir is the Asiatic lions’ only home. 

Recent Asiatic lion deaths in the district of Amreli in Gujarat have worried conservationists. In late July this year, news reports recorded the death of three lion cubs in Amreli; forest authorities have kept six other cubs and three lionesses under observation. In 2018, a combination of several health concerns including canine distemper – caused by a highly communicable virus – and a protozoal infection had killed more than 30 lions in Gujarat in a month’s span. 

Early this year, the Gujarat state government said in the Gujarat Assembly that 286 lions including 143 cubs had died between January 2023 and December 2024. At least 58 lions and 17 cubs died unnaturally, reported The New Indian Express.

“It is prudent conservation practice based on strong scientific foundations not to have all members of an endangered species existing at a single site,” commented big cat biologist Ravi Chellam, who has been involved with lion conservation since 1985.

“Any catastrophe natural or human-mediated can in a very short span of time wipe out the hard-won conservation success and lay to waste several decades of work, if all surviving members of an endangered species are restricted to a single population. The risks are numerous and include habitat fragmentation, degradation and destruction, cyclones, floods, forest fires, disease outbreaks, political decisions, droughts, poaching, violence and wars,” Chellam said.

Rising numbers, expanding ranges

On May 21 this year, Gujarat CM Patel announced results from the latest census of Asiatic lions. Their number has risen from 674 to 891 in five years, he said. The Census document claims that lion populations have also expanded their range (35,000 sq km now, an increase by around 16% when compared to 2020). 

“I suppose there is some merit in this claim. From the available information including maps, it looks like they have computed this area by joining the locations of the lion sightings farthest from Gir,” commented Chellam.

Per the Census, nearly half of the lion population (44%) has been observed in “non-forest areas” - wasteland, agricultural lands, riverine areas and near human habitation.

The bulk of this area where the expansion of Asiatic lions has occurred is human-dominated areas including cities and towns which are not very suitable for lions to inhabit, Chellam said.

“It does throw up challenges,” Chellam commented. “People’s lives are disrupted and the lions are also under stress. There are reports of lions turning aggressive and attacking people. There was a recent report of a man being attacked and killed by lions. This is bound to happen especially since people approach the lions closely on foot and often harass the lions. In fact, it is a miracle that the number of attacks are so low, given the extremely frequent interactions and the resulting opportunities for lions to attack people.”

On June 25, a lion dragged a five-year-old from a farm near Thordi village near Savarkundla range in Amreli district. The boy, who was mauled in the attack, died. The state forest department captured the lion and moved it to a rescue center, according to a report by the Press Trust of India. The latest Census recorded the presence of lions for the first time in Amreli: the district did not host lions before. 

Again in Savarkundla, forest department watchers found the body of a partially-eaten man in March this year. This came just a week after Amreli witnessed a lion kill a farmer, drag his body away and sit on it refusing to let go until forest officials intervened.

Flaws in census methods

Most people do not look beyond the main result of the latest lion census — that lion numbers have increased. Prime Minister Narendra Modi too raved about this rise. In his 122nd episode of Mann Ki Baat on May 25, he said:

“This number of lions that emerged after the lion census is very encouraging. Friends, many of you must be wondering how this animal census is conducted! This exercise is very challenging. You will be surprised to know that the Lion Census was conducted in 11 districts, in an area of ​​35 thousand square kilometres. For the census, the teams monitored these areas round the clock… twenty four hours. Both verification and cross verification were done in this entire campaign. This enabled the counting of lions to be completed with utmost precision.”

But there’s more to the Census – and it turns out that “precision” may have been the last thing that the exercise involved. 

While the Asiatic lion population may indeed have risen, scientists who have studied both the Asiatic lion as well as methods to accurately estimate big cat populations across the world – including African lions – told The Wire that the outdated and flawed methodology in India’s lion census leaves much to be desired.

The methodology employed to count the Gir lions falls within the broad category of ‘index-based methods’ in wildlife abundance estimation literature, scientist Arjun Gopalaswamy, told The Wire. Gopalaswamy is the founder and chief scientist of Carnassials Global, an organisation that provides science advisory services to governments, universities, etc. in Africa and Asia, and has co-authored studies on population estimation of big cats including tigers in India, African lions in Uganda and South Africa and African cheetahs in Kenya.

This category of ‘index-based’ methods is now considered outdated, as it fails to account for detection probability, rendering the information generated by such surveys unreliable, Gopalaswamy said. Detection probability is the probability that observers detect signs of an animal in an area, if it is present there.

“Consequently, any perceived changes in abundance are also unreliable,” Gopalaswamy added.

The latest “contemporary and robust approach” to counting lions relies on obtaining unambiguous individual identities, he said. This is now done predominantly through direct photography and complemented by other field methods. Moreover, this has to be done “within a rigorous spatial capture-recapture framework”, Gopalaswamy added. 

Spatial capture-recapture means a photo capture system where a region is divided into smaller blocks, or grids, and camera traps are deployed in these areas over a fixed amount of time taking into account the home ranges of lions. The number of lions here is then estimated using mathematical models, based on the number of times a specific individual was “caught” and “recaptured” by the camera traps. 

“This approach has been successfully implemented at large scales across several countries and specific sites in Africa,” Gopalaswamy said.

This is the same method that India too uses to estimate its tiger numbers. So why isn’t this more advanced and scientifically more robust technique being used to count lions? Because India does not use this method for lions yet, it “significantly lags behind many countries and sites in Africa in the scientific estimation of wild lion populations”, Gopalaswamy said. 

Even big cat biologist Y.V Jhala who was formerly with the government-run Wildlife Institute of India has been cautious about the numbers presented in the lion census. He told Al Jazeera in June this year that a “total count of wide-ranging wild carnivores is not a scientific way of estimating their population”.

Why does this matter?

Firstly, it raises questions about the validity of lion population estimation numbers that India is proudly celebrating. And secondly, bad science can be deleterious – for both people and wildlife – because this can influence conservation action in several ways.

“An emerging trend of concern is that changes in lion numbers, based on unreliable index-based methods, are being adopted uncritically in IUCN assessments, including the Red List and Green Status List,” Gopalaswamy said. “Worryingly, these trends are also being incorporated into scientific manuscripts without adequate questioning.”

A second home for India’s lions?

Biologists including Chellam have recommended time and again that Gujarat relocate some of its Asiatic lions to another site away from Gir to ensure that another, standalone population thrives in another location. But the Gujarat state government has resisted these suggestions, and even orders to this note from the Supreme Court. In April 2013, the Supreme Court had ordered that a few lions be translocated from Gir to Kuno within six months. But Gujarat has refused to share Asiatic lions with any other state so far. 

It is important to not forget that translocating lions to Kuno is “the law of the land” because of the Supreme Court order, Chellam added. “It is well over twelve years since this order was passed and tragically, everyone concerned has chosen to ignore this order of the Supreme Court of India.”

In this regard it is “disappointing” to see the “levels of impunity” with which the State Government of Gujarat and also the Government of India have been operating at, he said.

The governments are now setting up Barda as a ‘second home’ for the lions – but it is not ideal, Chellam commented. 

“Barda, as the crow flies, is less than 100 km from Gir, small in size (less than 200 sq.km), with a very low-density prey population and hence unsuitable to host a viable population of lions,” Chellam cautioned. 

The whole point in translocating a few lions to establish a second free-ranging population of wild Asiatic lions outside Gir is to ensure geographical isolation, he added. This geographical isolation is necessary to mitigate the risks of having the entire population of an endangered species as a single population. 

“Conservation of lions and in fact, most species, doesn’t require astronomical budgets,” Chellam noted. “What is required is knowledge-based plans which are implemented in a transparent, inclusive and accountable manner. Harping on Barda as a second home is merely a distraction and a delaying tactic to continue to stall the translocation of lions to Kuno.”

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