Asiatic Lion: Second Home & Kuno | UPSCPDF
UPSCPDF Editorial Analysis: why India
Key Takeaways | Quick Facts Box | Evolution of Asiatic Lion Conservation | Core Analysis — Success vs. Security | Constitutional & Legal Foundations | Multi-Dimensional Angles | Comparative Global Best Practices | Schemes, Policies & Laws | International Frameworks | Marks Breakdown | More Mains Angles (Multi-GS) | Additional Essay Angles | Key Actors & Stakeholders | Quick Revision Tags | 📚 Explore More UPSC Editorial Analyses
India's lions have rebounded to 891 — yet every wild Asiatic lion still lives in one landscape. Decoding the single-site risk, the Supreme Court's stalled Kuno directive, the 2018 disease scare and the metapopulation solution. India's Asiatic lion (Panthera leo persica) population has climbed to 891 individuals in the 2025 census — a 32% jump from 674 in 2020. Yet all of them remain concentrated in Gujarat's Saurashtra region, in and around the Gir landscape, making them the only free-ranging Asiatic lions on Earth and uniquely exposed to a single catastrophic event. An editorial critique revisits a long-standing policy failure: despite the Supreme Court's April 2013 directive to translocate lions to Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh, not a single lion has been moved in over a decade. Reports of the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) have consistently warned that a single-site population is inherently vulnerable to epidemics, fires, droughts and prey collapse — a warning the 20
⏱ Reading time: ~29 min
