This Country Leads the Way to Protect Lions

Gujarat, India, is the only home of Asiatic lions in the world, and they are considerably more protected than their African counterparts.

“In Gujarat, lions are conserved more compared to their counterparts in Africa. The incidence of man-animal conflict is much higher in that part of the world. Here, people have learned to coexist with them,” says J V Jhala, a lion expert.

Within India, a massive expansion of the land area for the apex predator is taking place, tripling from its current size of 10,000 square kilometres to 30,000 square kilometres. This comes as The International Union for Conservation of Nature announced its decision to reclassify the Asiatic lion from endangered to vulnerable – a positive shift. The IUCN’s global report further revealed that lions in Africa have a likelihood of a 33 per cent decline in population, 19 times higher than the estimation of decline within India. This vast difference is in part due to the rampant poaching of animals across the African continent. Hopefully, African countries will look toward India as they make concerted efforts to protect their endangered species.