Asiatic Lion Reintroduction Project

[Sanju]

(09-06-2016, 10:53 PM)Apollo Wrote: Nice posts @Ravisingh

I like to add few info and points


1) The lion's impact on ancient history, culture and art is significant. The major civlizations from vedic to biblical times originated in lands ruled by lions. If you take vedas and epics like Ramayana, Mahabharatha all were written in Sanskrit. Sanskrit never originated in India. These are written by Aryans who were migrated to India from Europe and Persia. In their culture Lions played an integral part. 


2) Indus valley civilization originated in the North western region of the Indian subcontinent, which is lion country. The Asiatic Lion (Panthera leo persica) roamed over a swathe of Asia, from Turkey in the west to Bihar in the east, and from the Caucusus in the north to the Narmada river in the south. In the Indian subcontinent, the lion lorded over Punjab (Pakistan and India), Sindh, Baluchistan, Haryana, Delhi, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Jharkhand. This is where aryans settled, ruled and then started conquering other parts of India. These are the areas where sankrit thrived. For these people lions are the King. The lion's impact on South Asian history, culture and art is significant. Mahesh Rangarajan notes in his paper 'From princely symbol to conservation icon: A political history of the lion in India': "It (the lion) was perhaps only rivalled in its power over the human imagination in India by the tiger." Adds Divyabhanusinh Chavda, author of The Story of Asia's Lions: "In the Vedic period, you had Narasimha ("Man-Lion"), the fourth of the Dashavatara of Lord Vishnu. The Buddha was known as 'Shakya Simha', the Lion of the Shakyas. His first sermon at Sarnath has been likened to (and is known as) by Buddhists as 'Simhanada' (Lion Roar). The lion is also the symbol of Mahavira. And we, of course, know of Emperor Ashoka's association with the lion." According to legend, 2,500 years ago, Vijaya, a disinherited Indian prince migrated to the island of Lanka with 700 followers. Vijaya's grandfather was a lion. His descendants, the Sinhala ('Lion people'), are today the majority ethnic group on the island, the flag of which is emblazoned with a lion too. 


3) When these people migrated and started ruling other parts of the Indian sub-continent, they started spreading there culture. From 500 AD, Rajput princes across India started adopting the title Simha instead of the classical Varman. Today, we know this surname as 'Singh', most commonly associated with Rajputs and Sikhs. Lions find constant reference in the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal periods too. Sher Shah Suri, the Afghan warlord from Bihar who dethroned Humayun, reportedly acquired the name 'Sher' after killing a lion with his bare hands. The Mughals, Persianised Turko-Mongols from Central Asia, used the regal Persian Sher-o-Khurshid ('Lion and Sun') as their personal coat-of-arms. 


4) Lions largely inhabited dry, tree-covered Savannah and low-scrub jungle, this is where people settlements were mostly found. Asiatic lions were not a man-eater (in-general), they shared the land with humans in India. Spotting lions is far easy and people respected there strength and the pride style of living. Bengal Tiger which inhabited mature-tree forests, lived in dense forests. These areas are not so suitable for human settlements. The most important thing here is, it is very very hard to spot a tiger, even in these present days most of the villagers in the outskirts of the tiger reserve never seen a tiger. Bengal tigers are notorious man-eaters, people feared them.



Regarding Indian Lion Hunting 

1) Colonel James Skinner (1778 -1841), the famous founder of Skinner's Horse and builder of Delhi's St James' Church, is recorded as shooting lions on horseback. Another officer, Andrew Fraser killed 84 lions 


2) In 1810, a General Mundy shot a lion near Hansi (modern Haryana). In the first half of the 1800s, British soldiers stationed at a cantonment in Deesa (North Gujarat) are recorded as spearing lions. And the all-time record in lion hunting in India goes to George Acland Smith, an officer who shot 300 lions near Delhi in 1857. 


3) Soldiers of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the Sikh sovereign of the Punjab, are recorded killing lions with bayonets in Lahore in the 1830s. In Patiala, hunting lions was an annual affair in which "400 horsemen beat vast plains teeming with antelope and Nilgai. 

All this killing eventually did its job. Region after region recorded local extinctions: Bahawalpur (1800), Palamau (1814), Haryana, Baroda and Ahmedabad (1830), Sindh (1842) and Gwalior (1872). 

By 1890, when Prince Victor Albert visited India, the only place where he could find lions was the Gir forest in Kathiawar, where politics between three feuding princely states (Junagadh, Bhavnagar and Baroda) and the British Government in Bombay ensured safety for lions. Later, the Nawabs of Junagadh took on the task of preserving lions in Gir, where they survive till today.

great.

(09-07-2016, 10:44 PM)Apollo Wrote:

(09-07-2016, 09:12 PM)brotherbear Wrote:

(09-07-2016, 10:53 AM)Ravisingh Wrote: Tigers can not displace lions from open forests coz they live in pride and lion could not displace tigers coz they are big and dangerous and live in dense forests where lions do not feel comfortable...so it was a natural balance I thing..lions occupied open areas and tigers occupied forested patchs and both avoided each other.

According to pckts at "Primates and Predator Interactions" post #34, lions have no trouble in adapting to a forest environment. This would mean that, except for the open grasslands, lions and tigers might occupy the same terrain.

Lions can adapt to forest environment and tigers can adapt to open grasslands provided if there is a good prey base and no any bigger apex predator (more adapted to that particular environment) to challenge them.
A good example is tigers in present time have adapted and successful in living in the open grasslands of central and northwest India due to the absence of lions.

Ancient India is a much different place, lions entering dense forests will have to face the more adapted and bigger tigers. Tigers entering open grasslands will have to face the more adapted pride of lions.
So the more logical decision is to avoid such confrontations.

This guy is osm. very realistic and factual. Reply