Kalyanji Bhai Jamuna Das Bhai Godhasara was plucking raw mangoes on his farmland in Dhava, a village in Gir Somnath district, on May 1 when a lioness attacked him.Godhasara was lucky as the lioness retreated after simply injuring him. To the unaided eye, this may appear to be a case of a carnivore attacking its prey — call it man-animal conflict — as can be expected in a jungle terrain teeming with wild beasts , but the reality is just the reverse.Locals will tell you that the lions — and lionesses — of Gir rarely attack humans unless provoked. In this case, a family in the neighbourhood of Godhasara had many visitors for a family marriage and apparently the lioness, along with her two cubs, was resting in the nearby farmland. It is not rare for the big cats to move beyond their natal territory in the 20,000 square km forests of Saurashtra and be spotted inside villages.Villagers say that the visitors from the marriage home frequently went to see the lioness and her cubs and even threw things at her. This, the locals say, was the trigger for the lioness to attack.Gir in the southern Saurashtra peninsula of Gujarat, which is the lone abode of the Asiatic lion in the wild — some 523 Asiatic lions live there as per the 2015 census — is otherwise a place where humans and lions live peacefully.“Lions do not live with us. We live with the lions here. There is no question of fear [from the lions],” says Parbat Bhai Seva Bhai Chavda, a Maldhari tribal who resides in the heart of the Gir forest.“They are our identity,” adds Chavda, who owns two buffaloes and three cows. The tribal group of Maldharis (‘mal’ means livestock and ‘dhari’ protector), who are traditionally cattleherders, have been living closely with the felids for the past several decades.There are nearly 8,400 Maldharis living in the Gir Forest National Park. Around 300 Vanya Prani Mitras, or friends of the forest animals, have been recruited to ensure that the lions are not attacked if they stray into nearby villages. Incidents of lion attacks, they say, are few and far between.But attacks on their cattle are not as infrequent. “Sometimes the beasts pick up one of our cattle — but that’s their food. It does not disturb us,” says Haresh Chowda, another Maldhari who runs a tea stall for tourists and owns 11 buffaloes and four cows.Apart from the Maldharis, a group of people of African origin known as the Siddis reside on the fringes of the forest in village Jambur. They were reportedly brought by the Nawab of Junagarh from the African shores for laying railway tracks in the region. Today, they have adapted to the Gujarati culture and lifestyle. They are mostly involved in construction work by the day and dance to the African tunes by the night for tourists.According to the 2015 census, the total lion population is up 27% from 411 in 2010. “Factors like timely rescue, improvement in habitat, water management, mitigation of man-animal conflict and more awareness among the locals have contributed to the rise in lion count,” says Sandeep Kumar, deputy conservator of forests, Gir National Park and Sanctuary.The Gir lion is now out of the “critically endangered” category and listed as “endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Although it represents one of the most successful conservation efforts, first by the Nawab of Junagarh and today by the Gujarat government ’s forest department, that the lions are located in a single region and face the threat of a wipeout in case of a epidemic is the fear that keeps conservationists awake at night.Asiatic lions once roamed from Turkey, north of Africa, Persia (Iran), Israel, Mesopotamia (Iraq), Palestine, Baluchistan, to many parts of India. In the Indian subcontinent, the carnivore lorded over Punjab, Sindh, Baluchistan, Haryana, Delhi, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Jharkhand.But rampant game hunting and killingsin Sasan-Gir, which was formerly the hunting reserve of the Nawabs of Junagarh and colonial personnel, led to a marked decline of the felid. Lions also struggled to survive one of the most severe famines between 1901 and 1905.According to Divyabhanusinh Chavda, author of The Story of Asia’s Lions, during the freedom struggle of 1857, a British officer, George Acland Smith, shot as many as 300 lions — all by himself! By 1893, the count, say records, was a dismal 18 for a single subpopulation in Gir.The book Narsingh ki Nagri by historian Parimal Rupani illustrates how the conservation efforts by the last Nawab of Junagarh, Mohabbat Ali Khan — otherwise known for acceding Junagarh to Pakistan at the time of Independence — were instrumental in bringing the felid back from the brink of extinction. This nawab put a ban on lion hunting.By 1920, the lion count had recovered to about 50 and, by 1936, the number had increased dramatically to 287. By the mid-1940s, the last of the lions in Iraq and Iran vanished and the lions of Gir were the sole representatives of the Asiatic subspecies. The disappearance of open grassland andscrub forests, rise in agriculture, improved firearms for hunters and encroachment of human settlements are some of the reasons for the extermination of the species from the other parts of India.Post-Independence, Gir forest came within the boundaries of the state of Gujarat, which continued with the policies of the erstwhile Junagarh princely state. Later, in 1965, Gir was conferred the status of a wildlife sanctuary. The sanctuary was upgraded to the status of a national park in 1975.“Gir lions is a remarkable conservation success story,” says wildlife biologist Ravi Chellam, who holds a PhD on Gir lions and is a member of the expert committee for the lion relocation project to Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary. On being asked about the reported 129 deaths of lions in Gir in the last two years, he says, “If as many lions have died, there have been [as many] births too but good news doesn’t sell.”The forest department has an active Vanya Prani Mitra programme that aims at monitoring wildlife presence, keeping an eye on suspects and keeping a vigil on visitors to the villages located inside the national park. Also, unlike many other national parks where poaching is common, such incidents are rare here. The Gujarat Forest department has a cash reward programme in the entire Greater Gir landscape for informants with some 5,000 posters and bulletins on display.In the recent past, farmers living on the periphery of the Gir forest used crude electrical fences to protect their crops from nilgai (the Asian antelope) and wild boar. But lions and other wildlife were also getting killed. Now, the electrical fences have been completely removed. Nearly 20,000 open wells dug by farmers in the area for irrigation were acting as traps, and led to the drowning of lions. Today, walls have been built around the wells, while the use of drilled tube wells is being encouraged. Concrete roads have added to the small worries of the lion habitat. “Concrete roads mean speeding cars plying in the forest — but we take due care,” says Kumar.Clearly, the lions are safer today than they’ve ever been in the past, but the biggest nightmare of conservationists is the risk associated with a single-location reserve for any species. After all, if an epidemic or natural disaster strikes Gir, the threat of mass extermination of the lions is a very real one.“The story of Gir lions is now more about building on and managing conservation success,” explains Chellam. “The key question for their future is whether we want to keep all our eggs in one basket, or do we want to reduce risk by establishing additional freeranging lion populations and enhance its abilities to deal with threats like disease and other natural calamities. Unless we translocate and establish at least one additional population, all the success achieved over the last 100 years may come to naught. Moreover the Supreme Court has also ordered the translocation of lions to Kuno,” he says.Keeping the possible dangers in mind, the Supreme Court of India ordered — on April 15, 2013 — the transfer of a handful of lions from Gir to Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh, to establish a second population there. But the Gujarat government, which takes a lot of pride in the state being the only home of the wild Asian lions, has been reluctant to play ball.The state government has since then been dragging its feet on the translocation of the beast to the neighbouring state.In response to the order, the Gujarat government filed a curative petition in the apex court against the translocation. “IUCN, in its red list, has noted that the current population of the Asiatic lions—though vulnerable— is a large and healthy one. Population and Habitat Viability Analysis workshop organised by IUCN in India has predicted zero per cent chance of extinction of these lions over the next 100 years,” the petition said. “Gujarat is of the view that it is undesirable from a scientific, technical and legal point to direct the translocation of the Asiatic lions to Kuno. It would be in the best interest of the Asiatic lions if this subject is left to the experts in the field and to the statutory authorities.” The presence of tigers in Kuno was another reason cited by Gujarat, arguing that it could result in a conflict between the top two predators.The lion is already a part of the Make in India logo of the Modi government . Interestingly, at the National Board for Wildlife meeting in March, the Central government suggested that the Asiatic lion replace the tiger as the national animal. Before the launch of Project Tiger, the lion was the national animal of India from 1952 to 1972.“The rise in population [of lions] is pretty good. But Asiatic lions face the threat of wipeout in case of any natural or manmade disaster as Gir is the only home of the sub-species in the whole world. It would be in the interest of the species to keep a small population at a distance from Gir,” says Diwakar Sharma , director of World Wildlife Fund India , the organisation that focuses on wildlife conservation and endangered species.A new home in a new state will also bring down the tourism pressure on Gir, point out experts. And a few wonder privately: if a chief minister who was the pride of Gujarat could move on to become the pride of India out of Delhi, why can’t the pride of Gir lions — or at least a part of it — take a similar path?