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Asiatic Lion - Data, Pictures & Videos

United Kingdom Spalea Offline
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The Gir lions showed by @sanjay search for the human zone in order to find something to eat or glean. As for the African lions you show @Rishi they are truly wild and don't seek at all the human settlements. But of course, they have learnt to know and fear the men and thus stay careful in front of them. Men and lions are watching each other, and in case of a man's false movement, the situation can very quickly be very problematic.

I also believe that lions know what a gun is and between armed men in fatigues (with guns and rifles) and a single tourist they know the difference.

It's a delicate balance I think. Lions inside great parks live as quite free lions do, they have enough preys to hunt and eat and they haven't reason to fear and flee from the guards, just stay cautious. And even less reasons to enter "an human zone". They stay linked to their territories.
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Rishi Offline
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( This post was last modified: 12-08-2019, 10:41 PM by Rishi )

(07-17-2019, 11:22 AM)Spalea Wrote: The Gir lions showed by @sanjay search for the human zone in order to find something to eat or glean. As for the African lions you show @Rishi they are truly wild and don't seek at all the human settlements. But of course, they have learnt to know and fear the men and thus stay careful in front of them. Men and lions are watching each other, and in case of a man's false movement, the situation can very quickly be very problematic.

Yes, no doubt one side is much more accustomed to human presence, although i've learnt that they spend most of their times in habitat patches or groves & farmlands resembling natural vegetation.

Except unlike those African lions and like the sugarcane tigers of Terai, they really don't have a choice but to depends on cattle & occasional crop-raiding herbivores.
What I'm saying is, there's no way of knowing how those African lions' cousins would have behaved in similar landscapes, because they have been killed off in all similar landscapes.

The reason these ones survive is also the reason fear factor is lower on both sides. What it all boils down to is; they face no repercussions for their cattlelifting.
The locals keep all their old & male calves (which pastoral herders can afford, given the fodder is free) spread out beside & behind the main herd of breeding/milking females & calves, as lion fodder.

The system has downsides as we can all see, but as far as "losing their wildness" is concerned or that lion not charging one of those bikers, it may very well be counted as a behavioural adaptation crucial to the survival in human dominated landscape.
We know that African lion have been known to behave similarly on similar cases.






...so are tigers.







So do the hundreds of leopards that live in Greater-Gir landscape, otherwise infamous for causing most attacks on humans over rest of India.

Lastly I know I regularly say that these lions should be moved to any proper habitats available in the region, but how do we really relocate 400 lions?
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United Kingdom Spalea Offline
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@Rishi :

About #1172


When at first men created parks in order to protect lions and tigers they learnt how to behave in front of them. Now, as some parks becoming too small for the lions or tigers populations, the big cats are learning how to behave when they enter into human zones or settlements.

Ine one of the video you showed, a lion crosses the road, and stops to allow to pass a man riding a motorbike. Perhaps the felids are going to learn the highway code... I' m joking, but the felids aren't responsible for their situation. There are some limits to what they can make and support with men and drivers.

And an accident is always possible and threats to becomme more and more frequent. As you told we cannot move 400 lions from an human zone to a wild zone. And if these lions will be more and more numerous, bad interactions between them and human population will becomme more and more common. This is a big risk, I fear.




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Oman Lycaon Offline
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Mahipat Darbar

Not the best photo but good non the less .


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Oman Lycaon Offline
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EMERGING FROM BLOSSOMED GREEN


after taking afternoon nap....yawning king....coming out of his....flowery green abode....

Sasan Gir 
August 2018


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Rishi Offline
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( This post was last modified: 07-21-2019, 08:01 AM by Rishi )

(07-17-2019, 04:36 PM)Spalea Wrote: @Rishi :

About #1172


When at first men created parks in order to protect lions and tigers they learnt how to behave in front of them. Now, as some parks becoming too small for the lions or tigers populations, the big cats are learning how to behave when they enter into human zones or settlements.

Ine one of the video you showed, a lion crosses the road, and stops to allow to pass a man riding a motorbike. Perhaps the felids are going to learn the highway code... I' m joking, but the felids aren't responsible for their situation. There are some limits to what they can make and support with men and drivers.

And an accident is always possible and threats to becomme more and more frequent. As you told we cannot move 400 lions from an human zone to a wild zone. And if these lions will be more and more numerous, bad interactions between them and human population will becomme more and more common. This is a big risk, I fear.





That tigress was from a national park, ones from the other 50% living in human dominated landscapes rarely do that... Volatile individuals are always the cause of problem, on both sides. 

What you say is very real issue athough, the revenue areas around Gir reserve have almost reached saturation too. That's the reason the lions are expanding their range. Still the lions' satellite metapopulations of Greater Gir are all concentrated around the larger forest tracts. Whatever lion presence you see in villages & farms, is mostly movement between local patches.

Source:
*14th Lion Population Estimation Report-2015
*'Site'ing the right reasons: Critical evaluation of conservation planning for the Asiatic lion
*Managing success: Asiatic lion conservation, interface problems and peoples’ perceptions in the Gir Protected Area

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Unprotected & unclassed, these however remain vulnerable to being lost to conversion for other use like industry or infrastructure development. They need to be properly demarcated under each village or municipal administrative unit.

Ironically, the farther you go from Gir the more these kind of patches would be available to them, to west & east & north, larger too. 

*This image is copyright of its original author

But to get the lions to truely form separate independent populations, they need to be randomly rounded up from all over Greater Gir and artificially reintroduced to large viable protected areas (Note: You can't possibly move enough of them to relieve pressure around Gir, which will churn out more lions to swiftly replace them too. This has a different purpose).
Because otherwise the south will remain overpopulated with lions while larger habitat swathes lying farther away would have populations started by only a handful of lions breeding among themselves.

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PS: Old post i made on this long ago, containing some more points.
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Oman Lycaon Offline
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rasik chavda

Even though these are older photos I still wanted to share.



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Oman Lycaon Offline
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Yatin Verma


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Rishi Offline
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Keyur Nandaniya Nature Photography
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©Rajesh Khatwani
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Suzanne Huot's Nature Photography

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Dominant duo.
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Hunting lessons. ©Vinit Nair

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Practice play-fight. ©Jatin Patel

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Youngster coalition meal. ©Mariana Visser

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Oman Lycaon Offline
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Samiul Kabir

KING


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Rishi Offline
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( This post was last modified: 07-25-2019, 08:04 PM by Rishi )

#asiaticlion hashtag on Twitter & Insta.

Laurence Rose

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Malay. N. Samani @malaynsamani

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Wading through monsoon flood-water (last year).

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Simba & Nala of Sasan Gir.

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Dr Vimal Hemani
It's hot, no rain...! Please do something, it's difficult to survive. The King with worry on his face and telling his concern to the trap camera and us.

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Another draught.

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With increasing draughts, anthropogenic climate change is going to hit western Indian subcontinent hard. Barely any rain this year, while North Bengal & Northeast are overflooded!
@sanjay @Jimmy @parvez @Sanju @Suhail how's the rain at your place?
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United Kingdom Spalea Offline
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@Rishi :

About #1181: I remind I told you (at the "camouflages and habitat shots" topic, I believe) that sometimes I didn't see any difference between tiger's and lion's habitat in India. Here you say a severe drought is raging over the Gir reserve. The lion you showed "complaining" is close to a water stretch. But, with the other lionesses and cubs at #1181, didn't seem scrawny. It's perhaps these drought and flooding periods that differentiate the lion's and tiger's habitats in India... And the wild animals know how to react.

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Rishi Offline
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( This post was last modified: 07-25-2019, 08:07 PM by Rishi )

@Spalea they'll make do. They survive the summer, except it's now 2 months longer. Plus the water-points in Gir (like in the photos) are being artificially filled to keep them from waltzing into habitation to drink.

Note The last few posts & further replies have been moved to the appropriate thread, so that this one isn't derailed. Continued here:
Pollution, Climate Change & other anthropogenic effects on Biosphere
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United Kingdom Spalea Offline
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(07-25-2019, 01:35 PM)Rishi Wrote: @Spalea they'll make do. They survive the summer, except it's now 2 months longer. Plus the water-points in Gir (like in the photos) are being artificially filled to keep them from waltzing into habitation to drink.

Note The last few posts & further replies have been moved to the appropriate thread, so that this one isn't derailed. Continued here:
Pollution, Climate Change & other anthropogenic effects on Biosphere

OK. Sorry, I didn't know that about the water-points inside the Gir park.
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Rishi Offline
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( This post was last modified: 07-26-2019, 01:37 PM by Rishi )

(07-26-2019, 03:56 AM)Spalea Wrote:
(07-25-2019, 01:35 PM)Rishi Wrote: @Spalea they'll make do. They survive the summer, except it's now 2 months longer. Plus the water-points in Gir (like in the photos) are being artificially filled to keep them from waltzing into habitation to drink.

Note The last few posts & further replies have been moved to the appropriate thread, so that this one isn't derailed. Continued here:
Pollution, Climate Change & other anthropogenic effects on Biosphere

OK. Sorry, I didn't know that about the water-points inside the Gir park.

I'm sure you've seen them.

There's those concrete saucers like in the photos above that you'll find in Gir as well as in peninsular India's tiger reseves, some pools/pond, older Maldhari cattle troughs.

Cattle trough. 



Saucer.




Those are artificially refilled by FD time to time, either manually by tankers (7:45)...



...or by windmill pumped tube-wells (thumbnail is of a natural waterhole though).




The natural streams are seasonal & watering holes are often not enough, not in gir nor in most tiger reserves. Often the presence of man-maintained water source is the reason for there being more tigers than similar quality buffer forests.

Another source is the reservoir of Kamleshwar dam, whose shores are coveted prime territories held by the largest prides of the area.



Exerpt from good article: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/india...-too-tight
Quote:...as the growing cat population has pushed one in four lions into new mini-sanctuaries they get to by riverbeds that snake through farms and villages.

Droughts that kill prey can make matters worse. After a drought in the 1980s, there were 120 lion confrontations in 1989-91 killing 21 people -- five taken as lion food, said biologist Ravi Chellam.

Most of the estimated 15 lion attacks each year happen outside the park, where people are less lion-savvy, scientists say. In April, a lion killed a 35-year-old man who was reportedly pelting it with stones.

Outside the protected area its a harder life, they often have to drink from drains & irritation runoff with insecticide. Many villages now maintain their own drinking troughs after Guj.govt decided to create 150-odd new artificial points all over Greater Gir besides the existing 400.

Monsoon is full of flash-floods that recharge the local aquifers & raise groundwater level for next 6 months.



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