Carcasses used as bait for Gir lions likely to risk human lives

Asiatic lions of the Gir forest are lured with livestock carcasses by the park managers in order to bring them closer to the areas frequented by tourists – a practice that adversely impacts the predator's natural hunting skills.

This rings an alarm bell among wildlife scientists, who fear that the practice may lead to enhanced man-animal conflict in Gujarat and even pose danger to human lives.

“In many prides that were (artificially) provisioned younger lions were observed to lack the predatory skills required to hunt, as cubs were regularly fed with dumped carcasses and those grew up as scavengers. Such animals that lack skills to hunt often come in conflict with humans, as after they disperse from the tourism zone and are no longer provisioned, they try to kill livestock (easier prey) and can also become a danger to human lives,” they warned.

Baiting lions for tourism greatly perturbed their natural density patterns in line with previous research demonstrating how baiting disrupted animal behavior and social dynamics, scientists from the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun reported on Wednesday.

Asiatic lions of the Gir forests are considered a conservation success as their numbers swelled from less than 50 in 1935 to more than 523 in 2018.

But while conducting a study to develop a better monitoring system for the endangered lions, the WII team found something very disturbing – the lions are not in areas that have their natural preys like Sambr and Chital deer.

“We expected lion density to be determined by natural prey distribution. Contrary to our expectation, lion spatial density was poorly co-related to the density and distribution of its principal prey species. This was likely since lions in the tourism zone got assured food through provisioning and natural prey probably did not regulate lion movement or density,” the team reported in the journal PLOS One.

“The surplus food changes the social behaviour of lions as the pride is not linked to its prey base and hunting is on a decline. We don't see such management in any other tiger reserves or game parks,” team leader and WII scientist Yadavendra Jhala told DH.

The Asiatic lion census is carried out by a method called total count, which scientists claim, is outdated. “Its an ancient way of counting. We have provided a scientific tool to monitor the lions and hope that the park management would use the best possible tools to preserve the world's only pool of Asiatic lions,” he said.

The researchers identified 67 individual lions out of 368 lion sightings within a study site of 725 square kilometers, estimating an overall density of 8.53 lions per 100 square km.

They were surprised to find that prey density did not appear to influence variations in lion density within the study site. Instead, lion density was higher in flat valley habitats (as opposed to rugged or elevated areas) and near sites where food had been placed to attract lions for tourists to view them.