Ahmedabad, 14 August 2014

As Supreme Court has rejected Gujarat government’s curative petition filed against propose translocation of Asiatic lions from Gujarat’s Gir to Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno Palpur, all eyes are on next move in this issue. An expert group of 12 members is going to take decision on next course of action in accordance wih the guidelines of IUCN. The 12-member committee was formed last year following the Supreme Court order of April 15, 2013. The committee had formed a two-member expert team comprising lion experts Ravi Chellam and Yaduvendrasinh Zala. In their report submitted to the committee, the two experts had stated that 12 lions will be shifted in the first phase and every three to five years, two-three lions – mostly male – should be shifted from Gir to Kuno to maintain the inter-linkage between lion populations in the two sanctuaries.

Gujarat government has developed Rampara vidi near Wankaner in northern Saurashtra as second home to lions. The project has been successful and birth and survival rate of lions has been good there. Rampara vidi is protected in such a nice way that even Chief Minister advised not to pay visit to that place. Visits of outsiders are completely banned, and only forest experts associated with the project can enter inside. As translocation to Madhya Pradesh is only for conservation purpose, Kuno Palpur is not likely to be allowed to become a tourist destination in near future, if lions are translocated there.

The questions regarding gun culture, poaching activity, conflict with tiger, richness of prey etc are of course there, and therefore number of lions to be translocated in first phase must be lowest possible.

It must be noted that Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, two states had tried to create lion safari by procuring zoo lions from Gujarat and making them free in limited jungle area. At both places, all lions ultimately died. Forget about breeding, they just couldn’t survive. Though Kuno Palpur is different place and this time the government is going to shift wild lions and not zoo lions, the risk is very much there. In Gir pocket of Saurashtra and even beyond that, emotions of people are very much attached to this issue. They are not convinced that translocation to Madhya Pradesh is completely safe and not risky for lions(there has been protest against one of the experts Ravi Chellam by locals in Sasan Gir for his advocacy in favor of translocation of lions). Even experts have doubts about this. They think translocation is a gamble and there’s no surety about its success. Success or failure of translocation exercise will be known only after a few months, or may be a few years. If at all translocation is unavoidable, the gamble should be played with minimum number of lions. They should be kept at Kuno Palpur not for tourism purpose but for conservation purpose as per Rampara vidi model.