India needs a second home for Asiatic lions

The piece argues that India’s conservation success in increasing the Asiatic lion population—now around the high hundreds—has not translated into true long-term security. It points out that the lions remain concentrated in a single main landscape (Gir), which makes the species highly vulnerable to extinction from any one catastrophic event such as disease outbreaks, epidemics, forest fires, droughts, or sudden declines in prey.

It traces the rationale for dispersal to research and wildlife science that repeatedly recommends a “metapopulation” strategy: maintaining more than one geographically separated population so that risk is spread and a single event cannot wipe out the entire species. The article cites the Supreme Court’s 2013 judgment as a key legal turning point, which directed translocation of lions from Gir in Gujarat to Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh, explicitly reasoning that conservation should follow ecological principles and that a second population is essential.