The lions seem oblivious to the presence of humans. Maybe they feel totally unthreatened in this privileged environment, where national park status has seen the end to poaching.Whatever the case, they play and cavort as though the paparazzi (camera-wielding visitors like myself) aren’t even there. But then, what visitor would not feel shutter-happy here?
The Gir-India Forest National Park and Wildlife Sanctuary (also known as Sasan-Gir) is a forest and wildlife sanctuary in Gujarat, India. Founded in 1965, with a total area of 1412 square kilometers (about 258 km total protected area (National Park) and 1153 km for the Sanctuary), the park is located 65 km south-east of Junagadh.
India’s Sasan Gir National Park is the last remaining lair of the impressive (OK, maybe even majestic) Asiatic lion. With the 2010 census indicating that lion numbers had risen to 411 — up from just 177 in 1968 — the species now appears to have been saved. It’s a far cry from the time around 1880 when just 12 lions were reported, the remnants of a species that once roamed the whole of northern and central India.
At the time, the lions seemed to face certain extinction.
It just may have been the Nawab of Junagadh who saved the Asiatic lion. His report of 1880 may have deliberately understated the real number of remaining lions in an attempt to gain public sympathy. And not a moment too soon, as the species had progressively become extinct across the whole of the rest of India from around 1840 in the eastern state of Bihar to about 1870 in Rajasthan. By 1913, it is believed, just 18 lions remained in the whole of India.
