In August, on a farm in the village of Dhokadwa, Gir Somnat area of Gujarat state, a farm owner discovered a foul odor emanating from a well. At the bottom of the 30-foot well, filled with water, was the carcass of a lion aged between three and five years. It appears the lion broke through the netting covering the well before falling inside. Forestry officials extracted the body and sent it for post-mortem examination. This incident once again highlighted changes in the geography of the Asian lion population recovery.
Although lions are protected in Gir, they no longer inhabit it exclusively. According to the Gujarat lion population assessment for May 2025, 891 Asian lions were recorded, which is 32% more than the 674 recorded in 2020. However, what is more telling is where these animals were found.
Only 394 individuals were recorded in the Gir National Park, Gir Wildlife Sanctuary, Pania Wildlife Sanctuary, and adjacent areas, which constitute the main or core population. The remaining 497 lions are distributed across nine satellite populations outside the core landscape. These territories include areas along the Bhavnagar coast, southwest Saurashtra, and other landscapes dominated by human settlements. The 2025 assessment also documented three new satellite populations, including the Barda, Jetpur Wildlife Sanctuaries and adjacent areas, as well as the Babra-Jadsan region.
If the lion population is growing, and more than half of the assessed population now lives outside the core Gir landscape, what does conservation success look like? This question is highly significant because outside protected forests, the lion's habitat can be a farm, pasture, village outskirts, a road, or even a coastal settlement.
The Landscape is Changing
In recent months, several incidents have occurred across the vast Gir landscape. In June, according to the Indian Express, a 25-year-old restaurant worker from Uttarakhand died in an alleged lion attack near the village of Kowa in the Amreli district. Forestry officials found parts of his body and a severed head near the access road and initiated an operation to capture a pride of four lions moving through the area.
According to media reports, a second alleged lion attack was recorded a few days later in the Mahuva area of the neighboring Bhavnagar district, where a partially eaten human body was found in the bushes. Forestry officials stated that circumstances are still under investigation and that it is too early to draw definitive conclusions about the wildlife-related cause of death. On June 24, according to sources cited by India Today, a five-year-old boy in the village of Chaturi, Amreli district, died after a lioness attacked him while he was walking with his grandfather. This marked the third lion attack in the Amreli district in a month.
The response in such cases is standard: tracking the animal, identifying the suspect lion, capturing it, and assessing potential risk. Such a response is necessary when people are in danger. But what happens when the problem is not one specific lion, but a growing population occupying an increasingly urbanized landscape?
As wildlife biologist and conservationist Ravi Chellam notes, the language used to describe these encounters can be misleading itself. He states: 'Currently, lions are being encountered outside the Gir area in administrative zones. The problem is not that lions have started appearing where they were not expected. The problem is that the places where they expect to live and the places where humans live are intersecting.'
Start with the Numbers
The figure of 891 is impressive. However, Chellam believes the first step should be studying this number, not just celebrating it. The 2025 assessment accounted for 196 adult males, 330 adult females, 140 subadults, and 225 cubs. This assessment was conducted as part of a large-scale effort involving thousands of personnel and individual identification methods. A peer-reviewed 2026 study described the assessment methodology as including 3254 trained personnel, individual identification via body markings, and duplicate checking using direct observation and the SIMBA artificial intelligence system.
Nevertheless, Chellam insists that the ecological significance of this number must be considered separately. He emphasizes: 'Firstly, we need to understand the accuracy of the lion assessment report prepared by the Forest Department. We must ask whether it possesses sufficient scientific value or not. We tend to rejoice in wildlife growth, but the value of this growth must be evaluated ecologically.'
He continues: 'Why and what report was accepted, is the methodology scientifically sound? Since the land has constantly faced conflicts or even diseases among lions, it is necessary to understand if this is practical or not.' These questions are important because the population does not exist independently of its landscape. Rainfall affects water availability. Water affects vegetation. Vegetation affects herbivores. Herbivores affect predators.
Chellam shares his perplexity: 'I am often puzzled by the constant growth of wildlife because it is not entirely ecologically sustainable. It depends on the weather and the monsoon. If we are currently observing quite long dry spells of six to nine months, this also means water scarcity, which affects vegetation, and then herbivores, which in turn affects predator populations.' He concludes: 'Therefore, it cannot always go up.' For Chellam, a more important question is whether the landscape is keeping pace with this growing graph. 'Without quality and, most importantly, connected habitats, numbers mean nothing.'
More Lions, But Where?
The 2025 assessment provides an important clue. Of the 891 counted lions, 394 were in the core Gir landscape. The remaining 497 were distributed across nine satellite populations outside it. This means that more lions were recorded outside the core population than inside it.
In the Gir forests, the sole home of Asian lions, a rare and alarming incident was captured that stunned tourists during a safari in Sasan Gir National Park. Ecologically, dispersal may indicate species range recovery, but it also changes the conservation challenge. A lion within a protected forest is managed primarily through habitat protection, prey management, monitoring, and anti-poaching measures. A lion outside may encounter an open well, a highway, livestock, agricultural fields, industrial infrastructure, or a village at night.
Government data also shows that mortality has not disappeared with population growth. According to data presented in Parliament, 669 lions died between 2020 and 2024. Reported causes included old age, disease, injuries, cub mortality, falls into open wells, electric shock, and accidents. This is the paradox of successful recovery: as the population grows and its range expands, the conservation task shifts from protecting the species from extinction to ensuring the availability of a sufficiently safe habitat for its survival.
Chellam Directly Names the Problem
He asserts: 'We do not always need a census to talk about the health of the forest. It just gives a good certificate, but what we need is on-the-ground protection.' And this protection, he says, must extend beyond the lines drawn on maps. 'We must condemn the 'sacrilegious' acts committed, such as habitat fragmentation, loss of connectivity...'
The Disease Question
Another reason why the geography of lion populations matters is disease. In recent months, Gujarat lions have faced renewed concerns about disease-related deaths. In June, it was reported that at least 13 lions, including 10 cubs, died in Gir Somnat and Amreli over approximately 10 days. Local sources linked some deaths to babesiosis and expressed concerns about canine distemper virus. The Forest Department refuted parts of this account and confirmed eight deaths related to 'seasonal illnesses.'
For an endangered species whose entire wild population is confined to one broad landscape, an outbreak of disease can have consequences that go beyond individual deaths. Chellam states: 'An outbreak of disease in a wild and freely moving population of an endangered species is always worrying.'
The Second Home That Never Appeared
There is an older conservation question underlying the current issue. Should all wild Asian lions continue to live in Gujarat? For many years, conservation scientists argued that maintaining the species in one geographically concentrated population exposes it to systemic risks such as disease, extreme weather, natural disasters, and other landscape-level shocks. In 2013, the Supreme Court ruled for the reintroduction of Asian lions in Kuno in Madhya Pradesh, viewing a second population as necessary for the long-term survival of the species. The court framed this issue through an 'ecocentric' approach and the 'standard of best interests of the species.'
More than ten years later, India's wild Asian lions remain confined to Gujarat. Chellam notes: 'There is no hope yet. Almost 13 years later, lions are still confined to Gujarat.'
The irony is hard to ignore. Chellam believes the consequences of this delay are becoming evident in Saurashtra. 'Naturally, this was violated, and now there is a local surplus.'
This does not mean that lions have suddenly become too numerous in absolute terms. It means that the available landscape, in his estimation, is not expanding at the same rate as the population.
The Situation in Gir
Chellam explains: 'For Gir, there is nothing to do with corridors because lions can move anywhere—into human settlements, even onto people's balconies. They are capable of moving through these landscapes dominated by people. Thus, in the case of Gir, we cannot consider corridors in the traditional sense, saying that animals need a specific forest passage to move from one protected area to another.' He adds: 'To any animal, boundaries are administrative markers. They certainly won't understand them. But Gir is only 1500 sq km—so 800–900 lions is a lot for that area. We created these administrative boundaries and designated Gir as the space where lions should stay, but animals do not recognize these boundaries. If the population exceeds what this landscape can support, they will naturally move out in search of space and resources.'
Local incidents, such as the death of a cub in a farmer's field in Amreli, indicate that the way these events are reported can also shape public perception, as encounters are sometimes described as 'deliberate attacks' before the circumstances and animal behavior are established. Chellam says: 'The word 'they wandered' is wrong. It is our fault. We draw administrative lines, and then say that animals wander? The lion did not cross any natural boundary. We drew this line, and then decided that everything outside it is a place where the lion should not be. If the animal moves to other areas due to pressure within the existing landscape, we should ask what we did to the landscape, not call it the animal's mistake.'
Chellam estimates that the number of lions that Gir can sustainably support is much lower than the current total. 'Approximately 200–300 should be the absolute maximum, roughly, scientifically.'
What Does Success Look Like Now?
The figure of 891 remains an achievement in conservation. The Asian lion survived when it could have completely vanished in the wild. Its population grew, its range expanded, and new satellite populations emerged.