The recovery of the Asiatic lion population illustrates both the success and the fragility of single-landscape conservation. Discuss with reference to Project Lion.

The Asiatic lion (Panthera leo persica), once reduced to a few dozen individuals, numbered 891 in the 16th Lion Population Estimation (May 2025), up 32% from 674 in 2020 [1]. Yet this recovery rests on a single free-ranging population in the Greater Gir landscape of Saurashtra — making the same achievement its greatest vulnerability.

Success of the single-landscape model

• Concentrated protection worked: Gir Sanctuary (1965) and National Park (1975), backed by a dedicated Gujarat Forest Department cadre, reversed a near-extinction trajectory.
• Dedicated funding: the Asiatic Lion Conservation Project (2018-19 to 2020-21) committed Rs 97.85 crore from the Centre under the Centrally Sponsored Scheme–Development of Wildlife Habitat, treating the lion as one of 21 critically endangered species under the species recovery programme [2].
• Project Lion (announced 15 August 2020) shifted to a landscape-ecology approach — habitat and water-source improvement, a dedicated veterinary institute, "lion ambulances", GPS-based tracking and a Task Force for the Greater Gir Region [2].
• Range expansion: lions now occupy about 35,000 sq. km across 11 districts [1], dispersing into Girnar, Mitiyala, Savarkundla-Liliya and the Bhavnagar coastal tracts.

Fragility of the same model

• Epidemic risk: one gene pool in one landscape — the 2018 canine distemper outbreak showed a single pathogen can threaten the whole wild population.
• Habitat fragmentation: nearly half the lions now live outside the protected core, in farmland, grasslands and revenue wastelands where corridors like Babarkot lack formal protection.
• Rising conflict: coexistence depends on local tolerance, not statutory safeguards, in human-dominated mosaics.
• Delayed second home: despite proposals such as Barda Wildlife Sanctuary, a genuinely independent second population is still nascent [1].

Gir demonstrates that focused, well-funded, community-linked protection can rescue a species — but numbers alone are not security. The way forward is to legally notify dispersal corridors, institutionalise conflict-compensation and coexistence incentives, and accelerate a viable second free-ranging population. Only a distributed landscape network can convert this conservation success into lasting resilience, in keeping with SDG 15 (Life on Land).