WII report shows that Asiatic lions are looking for new habitat along grasslands

With more than 60 lions roaming outside the Gir Sanctuary area, fears have been expressed on potential man-animal conflicts in the region.

A study by the state Forest Department and the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehradun has found that Asiatic lions from Gir are now looking for a new habitat along the grasslands of Palitana, Mahuva and Sabartundla adjoining the sanctuary.

It has also been observed that lions moving out of the sanctuary area cover approximately 800 sq km as opposed to the ones within the park, who restrict their movement within 100 sq. km. This came to light after tracking the movement of five lions, who have been radio collared by WII.

"With 60 out of 350 lions out of the protected area, the potential for the man-animal conflict is very high. This is astounding and very unusual. This indicates that the existing lion population will need about 10,000 sq. km use," said Dr Y V Jhala from WII, Dehradun.

Forest Department officials have, however, said that despite such movement of lions outside the protected area, cases of man-lion conflict have not really gone very high. Generally conflicts are reported between humans and leopards around the Gir Forest area, they said.

Bharat Pathak, Conservator of Forest (Wildlife) Junagadh, said: "Looking at the kind of dispersal of the lions, we cannot really say that incidents of lion-human conflicts have really gone up in the region. In the last four years, we had registered only one human death due to a lion attack and that too in 2005-06."

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