Gujarat’s pride to remain MP’s envy? Plan to bring lions to Kuno likely shelved | India News

BHOPAL: Has the curtain lastly and quietly come down on a three-decade saga – the elusive plan to bring Asiatic lions from Gujarat’s Gir sanctuary to Kuno in Sheopur district of Madhya Pradesh? Likely. Lions might sit on the prime of the meals chain, however the rumble within the jungle suggests cheetahs have outmanoeuvred them within the Kuno conservation stakes.A July 30 forest division notification asserting renaming of the ‘Lion Project’ in MP’s Kuno National Park to ‘Cheetah Project’, and redesignation of its director to “field director, Cheetah Project, Shivpuri”, has led many to suspect that Asiatic lions will not roar in what was supposed to be their second house in India after Gir.However, whereas Kuno successfully turns into the protect of the formidable cheetah reintroduction programme launched by PM Narendra Modi in 2022, official phrase on it’s that the Lion Project hasn’t been scrapped.“This is procedural restructuring. No post has been abolished. Positions have been renamed for better conservation targeting,” further chief secretary (forest) Ashok Barnwal instructed TOI.Another senior official who did not need to be named mentioned this had been finished to “ease international communication” since Kuno was now globally recognized with Project Cheetah.A 3-decade waitThe concept of making a house for the Asiatic lion past Gujarat dates again to the Eighties, when wildlife scientists warned that Gir alone could not safeguard the species. Field research by the Dehradun-based Wildlife Institute of India over a decade had recognized Kuno as essentially the most appropriate web site for relocation of lions.The Asiatic Lion Reintroduction Project was then formally launched after the Supreme Court directed Gujarat in April 2013 to give away some Gir lions. The court docket particularly requested the Centre to set up Kuno because the endangered Asiatic lion’s different house in India.Successive state govts in Gujarat refused to enable lions to be relocated from Gir, insisting that they had been secure of their authentic habitat and alleging that Kuno’s topography wasn’t conducive to their survival. Officials in Gujarat described Gir lions because the state’s “pride” and filed evaluation and healing petitions, each of which had been dismissed by the apex court docket. The reluctance, couched in ecological considerations, was broadly seen as a mixture of politics and status. The Centre maintained a stoic silence, and the mission remained trapped in a maze of bureaucratic recordsdata, professional committee suggestions, and studies of periodic discipline visits.Cheetahs take centre stageSince the primary batch of African cheetahs landed in Kuno from Namibia and South Africa in Sept 2022, the one point out of the pending plan to relocate lions to Gir was in a state govt audit final 12 months.“Cheetahs were not part of the Kuno management plan,” states the audit report, additionally flagging alleged violations and incomplete documentation of Project Cheetah expenditure.According to the official administration plan for the interval 2020-21 to 2029-30, Kuno was to be designated a secondary habitat for Asiatic lions. “No efforts had been made towards reintroduction of lions, as of Nov 2023,” the audit report says.The audit additionally talks about lacking studies from a three-member workforce appointed by SC on Jan 28, 2020. The workforce was required to submit four-monthly surveys and suggestions on websites for African cheetahs. “These reports were not found in the forest division’s records, preventing verification of the facts presented to the Supreme Court,” the report states.