Examine the challenges of managing human-wildlife coexistence as endangered species disperse beyond formally protected areas, with reference to the Asiatic lion in Gujarat.

The 2025 lion estimation recorded 891 Asiatic lions spread over roughly 35,000 sq. km across eleven Saurashtra districts, with nearly half living outside the Gir protected area [1]. Success has thus shifted the task from guarding a park to governing a shared, human-dominated landscape.

Conflict and the limits of community tolerance

• Lions now range over farmland, grasslands and coastal tracts, raising livestock predation and night-time safety concerns; delayed or inadequate compensation quickly erodes goodwill.
• Coexistence rests on local tolerance, not fences — an intangible asset that a single high-profile attack can reverse.

Weak legal and spatial protection outside PAs

• Dispersal habitats and corridors largely lie on revenue and private land, without sanctuary notification under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.
• Farm expansion, highways, railways and open wells cause avoidable mortality and fragment connectivity between satellite populations.

Disease and single-landscape vulnerability

• Contact with livestock and feral dogs outside protected zones raises epidemic risk, as the canine distemper outbreak in Gir demonstrated.
• With one free-ranging population, a single epidemic or natural disaster threatens the whole subspecies, prompting gene pool centres at Rampara and Satvirda and development of Barda Wildlife Sanctuary as a second habitat [3].

Administrative and capacity gaps

• Forest staff hold limited jurisdiction over revenue land; rapid rescue, veterinary response and regulation of unauthorised "lion shows" and tourism strain existing capacity.
• Coordination is required across forest, revenue, police, agriculture and infrastructure agencies — the rationale for Project Lion's landscape-scale "Zone Plans and Theme Plans" for the Greater Gir Region [2].

Coexistence, not enclosure, is now the operative model of Indian conservation. The way forward lies in securing corridors as legally recognised conservation reserves, prompt compensation, disease surveillance and ICT-based tracking through the National Referral Centre–Wildlife at Junagadh [3], and eco-development that makes local communities beneficiaries [2]. Sustained community participation, credited for the 32% rise since 2020 [4], must remain the foundation — aligning the Article 48A duty to protect wildlife with SDG-15 on life on land.