World Lion Day reminder: Asiatic lion cubs getting crushed by speeding trains

August 10 was observed as World Lion Day, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted early morning photographs of Asiatic lions, lauding the increase in their population in Gujarat. While the number of Asiatic lions has gone up remarkably in the past two decades, the survival of the species in their last abode in the Saurashtra peninsula is increasingly under threat, creating a very complex situation vis-a-vis the conflicts with human habitations and industrialisation on the coastal belt.

In the last fortnight of July, Gujarat lost lions in two separate incidents. A goods train ran over two sub-adult lions near Pipavav Port in Amreli district while a passenger train killed a four-month-old cub near Savarkundla in the same district. These are only the latest in a series of similar accidents over the last several years, and one of the points on which the Gujarat High Court has demanded a response from the state forest department, as to what is being done to protect the lions from speeding trains.

The court advised the forest department to put up fences around railway tracks running through lion territory, whether revenue or forest land, reduce train speeds and coach personnel operating trains in that area. Only a portion of the tracks has been fenced, and accidents and lion deaths continue.

Moreover, if one glances at the Gujarat and central governments’ blueprints for industrial development of the Saurashtra region, where lions roam in nine of the 11 districts of the peninsula, massive projects, including major ports, special investment regions and cement factories, are coming up in the next few years. This means more highways, railway connectivity and urban development cutting into forest cover.

In the first week of August, a four-month-old lion cub died due to Babesiosis, a tick-borne disease, in the Shetrunji wildlife range of Amreli district. Babesiosis is another persistent cause of lion deaths and is estimated to have killed over two dozen of them in the last five years.

The population of lions in Gujarat is 674, as per the last census in 2020, but an estimate in 2022 pegs the number at well over 750. More than half of these lions roam outside protected forests, crisscrossing human habitation and agricultural land, damaging crops and preying on livestock. The Supreme Court in 2013, following a long-drawn battle, directed Gujarat to part with a few lions to create another home for the species at the Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh. This was meant to reduce pressure on the existing habitat and ensure protection from any singular natural disaster or disease wiping out the entire species. However, the Gujarat government has not followed the order, and Kuno has become the first site for India’s cheetah reintroduction process.

While politicking over conservation of the big cat species continues, so do deaths of lion cubs from speeding trains. As the Asiatic lion population grows and rampant urbanisation keeps pace, there is little time to lose.

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