Environment › Species in news
Asiatic lion
The Asiatic lion is found wild in one place on earth, the Gir landscape of Saurashtra in Gujarat, and the count has risen: 891 in 2025 against 523 in 2015. The question has shifted from numbers to room. Nearly half the lions now live outside protected areas, in satellite populations reached by corridors, and a limestone mining proposal on the coast threatens one of them.
UPSC has asked
- Prelims 2019: whether the Asiatic lion is naturally found in India only
- Prelims 2017: the site proposed for translocating lions from Gujarat
The Asiatic lion
- The Asiatic lion (Panthera leo persica) is the only lion that still lives wild outside Africa.
- It is Endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.
- It is listed in Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, the Act's strictest protection.
- It survives in the wild only in the Gir landscape of Saurashtra, Gujarat, where its range has grown to about 35,000 sq km from about 30,000 in 2020.
- The 2025 estimate is 891 lions, against 523 in 2015, and nearly half of them now live outside protected areas in nine recognised satellite populations across Saurashtra.
- The pressure on the species is now space rather than numbers, as mining proposals and conflict with people press on the corridors between those populations.
- Project Lion, announced in 2020, is the plan that applies, and it manages the whole landscape rather than a single protected area.
What has happened
6 Aug 2026
A limestone mining proposal over 75 ha of reserved forest was reported to threaten the corridor that links the coastal Jafrabad lions to the main Gir population.
- Gujarat is separately creating a 100 ha enclosure for lions that have attacked people.
The Hindu, 6 Aug 2026: Asiatic lion numbers rise, but corridors are under pressure (opens in a new tab) · PIB, 10 Aug 2026: Asiatic lion numbers rise to 891 (opens in a new tab)