Asiatic Lion - Data, Pictures & Videos

[chaos]

(12-14-2017, 10:13 PM)Rishi Wrote: @chaos You (& many others) shouldn't have had such opinion in the first place. 
It is based on a flawed view cooked up by who-knows-who, circulating in the internet that the numbers fell as low as a dozen, which is preposterously baseless...

Let me present an excerpt from 2015 lion census report gujenvis.nic.in/pdf/lion-population-estimation-report:

*This image is copyright of its original author

Considering that they first started recieving protection from the last decade of 19th Century, no possible conservation scenario could have pulled the numbers back up from there, to 285 (even if that value is probably highly exaggerated) by 1936.

The population most likely never fell below 100.

Actually the first proper census was done in 1968, after Gir was declared a Wildlife Sanctuary in 1965. 

So, some amount of inbreeding has definitely happened, but not as alarming as uninformed people make it out to be...
The specimens in the zoos are definitely below par though. Good info found by @Betty here #182. Because they are almost invariably made up of orphans, rejected or abandoned by their mothers.
This is how we obtain them.

Glad to see the steady increase in numbers. The gene pool is now more diverse, resulting in healthier lions. Yes, I was of the belief the numbers were at one time a dozen or so. That info was commonly circulated.  Thanks for the clarification Rishi. Reply