Asiatic Lion - Data, Pictures & Videos

[Rishi]

(07-17-2019, 04:06 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

*This image is copyright of its original author

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.

*This image is copyright of its original author

PS: Old post i made on this long ago, containing some more points. Reply