20 February 2015 / leggypeggy

Gir National Park—the last refuge for the Asiatic lion

Africa, Asiatic lions, cameras, Gir National Park, Gujarat, India, lions, national parks, Prayaan India Overland, wildlife

So close I could have stroked her. Notice the scars on her nose

People often assume that Africa and zoos are the only places to see lions, but they’re wrong. Asiatic lions, which used to roam widely throughout Asia, are still kings of the jungle in a small part of Gujarat in western India.

According to the last census in 2010, Gir National Park has a population 411 of these lions. The park’s 2015 census, scheduled to take place in early May and using GPS technology, will determine whether the numbers are up or down. I’m expecting them to be up. They went from 359 to 411 in the five years prior to 2010.

As of this week, I was lucky enough to see not just one, but nine of these magnificent cats. Over three separate game drives (more about them below), we saw two females with a cub (thought to be female), then a mum with two male cubs, then a lone male and finally a courting/mating couple.

Two females and a cub

But we didn’t just see them. The first group—the two females and the cub—walked beside us. I was told to sit up straight and not hang my head out the side the Gypsy (what the vehicles are called). If my arms were a bit longer and I was a bit more daring, I could have stroked them.

The mating pair were lounging around when we were there, but we were told by a guide who went by after us, that they’d become a bit frisky.

Seeing nine was a huge bonus. According to Wikipedia, Iran’s last pride of Asiatic lions (a female and four cubs) were cornered and shot in 1963. The male had been shot earlier. No sightings have been made since then.

A cub keeps ‘her’ distance from us

Back in the early 1900s and during a severe drought, there were only about a dozen lions left in Gir’s teak forest. The then Nawab (Muslim ruler) of Junagadh provided enough protection for the animals that the numbers recovered a bit between 1904–11.

But the slaughter resumed in 1911 after the Nawab died and, by 1913 the numbers were estimated at 20. The British Administration implemented shooting restrictions and, by 1936, the count was up to 287.

Today most of the lions roam across 545 square miles of Gir sanctuary (that encompass the 100 square miles of actual park). For the most part, they co-exist fairly peacefully with the Maldhari—8400 live in the park. These nomads raise livestock and while their settlements have caused some problems for the lions, they have also provided the beasts with some protection.

Licking his chops and remembering lunch

The 2010 census shows that about a quarter of the lions live outside the sanctuary. The state of Madhya Pradesh has made a successful court application to have some animals moved to their Kuno sanctuary, but this has not yet happened.

I can understand Gujarat’s desire to remain the lions’ last host—what a great tourist drawcard—but they are not thinking ahead. What if disease or fire sweeps through the Gir lions? In 1994, an epidemic of canine distemper hit Serengeti National Park in Tanzania and killed about 1000 African lions.

The mating pair lounging around

Compliments and complaints about the game drives

We had four game drives through the Gir forests. We were only supposed to have two, but the van we are travelling in needed new brake shoes so we stayed in the area for an extra day. Luckily we were able to squeeze in two more drives.

Getting a drive spot is a real production. There are only three drives per day—starting at 6:30am, 9:30am and 3:30pm—and 30 vehicles allowed per drive. Fifteen vehicles are allocated online, several months in advance.

If you want one of the last 15 slots, you have to queue from the middle of the night. Two days in a row, Gary and Shalak took up the challenge, heading to the queue at 4am and then 2am. The third day Gary and Anand went at 4am and we ‘only just’ got a place. Our campsite host had arranged a proxy to stand in the queue for us, or we never would have managed.

It was almost a pity that we did. This third drive was totally crappy because the guide was hopeless AND, even worse, the governor of the state showed up and all the good drive zones were set aside for his use only. But the fact that we were already at the park meant Gary and I hopped in the queue for the last afternoon drive. Our four-hour wait paid off and we got a slot and a great game zone.

Even though you have to wait a long time to get your placement, the system works fairly smoothly. There’s a bit of arguing in the queue, and a bit of attempted queue-jumping. But calm is restored when the guy with the handlebar moustache and spear turns up. Sorry I missed getting a pic of him.

The trackers with their sticks—some protection

Lion-spotting is improved too by the work of fearless rangers. These fellows travel through the park on motorbikes and then tramp into the bush, carrying only a stick and sometimes a walkie-talkie, to urge lions out of their slumbering hideaways. I give them a lot of credit.

But here’s my big, big gripe about the organisation. Unlike every other park in India, the parks of Gujarat charge 600 rupees per person for a camera on every drive. That’s about US$10 and A$12 per drive. So I paid A$48 for camera usage alone over three days. Ridiculous and thievery in my opinion! Especially because you also pay to enter the park, pay for the use of the vehicle and pay for the guide. Thanks goodness Poor John doesn’t carry a camera.

On reflection, I don’t mind the camera charge for three of the drives, but I never even got my camera out of its bag on that third drive. So whatever you do, avoid zone 1 and try your best to get zone 2 (exiting from zone 6). Brilliant!

The courted female having a rest

A bit about the Asiatic lions

While these lions are slightly smaller than their African counterparts, they are equally majestic. It terms of size, they can still run to 420 pounds in weight and 3.5 feet in height at the shoulder.

Gestation period is about 100 days, and mothers nurse their young for about two months. The cubs aren’t completely weaned until they are three to four months old. Then the diet is meat only, which keeps the mum busy as a killing machine. Cubs starting hunting for themselves at about the age of one or one and a half. Their first attempts, usually involving small prey such as birds and mice, are quite clumsy.

Male cubs leave the pride at about age two, mostly to prevent in-breeding and establish their own territory (marking, roaring and fighting) at about the age of four. Every adult lion we saw had scars.

Our guide thought the mating male was five or six years old and might maintain his authority for another six or seven years—certainly not for 10.

And a bit of trivia: Asiatic lions were the beasts doing battle in the Coliseum in Rome.

P.S. Lions are carnivores so I wonder if they’d like the beef cheeks recipe on my cooking blog?