Big cats

Prelims and Mains

• The Asiatic lion (Panthera leo persica) is the only lion that still lives wild outside Africa.
• It is Endangered on the 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.

See also: Lion attacks on people

Prelims and Mains

The Jafrabad lions live on the coast, well away from Gir, and what keeps them part of the same population is the strip of forest in between. A limestone proposal now stands over part of that strip.

• The proposal covers 75 ha of reserved forest on the corridor linking the coastal Jafrabad lions to the main Gir population.

Prelims

• The cheetah, Acinonyx jubatus, is the fastest land animal and hunts by daylight sprint rather than ambush.
• It is Vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.
• It was declared extinct in India in 1952, and the animals here now descend from founders brought from Namibia in 2022.
• Its Indian range is Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh and Gandhi Sagar, with Banni Grassland in Gujarat and Nauradehi Wildlife Sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh to follow.
• The population stood at 52 in September 2026, from 29 founders, with 49 cubs born in India.
• Project Cheetah is the programme that covers it.

Prelims

Project Cheetah is the programme that brought the animal back and now has to settle it. The Union Environment Minister reviewed it at Bhuj on 13 September 2026, four years after the first founders landed.

• The test has moved from survival to spread, since Kuno holds the founders and the cubs born to them while Gandhi Sagar is the second site to receive animals.
• Banni Grassland and Nauradehi Wildlife Sanctuary are being readied to take cheetahs next.
• More of the present population was born in India than was flown in, which is the change a reintroduction has to produce before it can stand on its own.

Prelims

• The mainland clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa) is a forest cat and the State animal of Meghalaya.
• It is Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List.
• It is listed in Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, the Act's strictest protection.
• It lives in Himalayan and Northeast Indian forests.
• The pressure on it is the break up of that forest into separated patches.
• India's first Clouded Leopard Conservation Action Plan, of July 2026, applies to it, along with the Species Recovery Programme under the Integrated Development of Wildlife Habitats scheme.

Prelims

The plan works at the scale of landscapes rather than single reserves, and on the forest that lies between them.

• It names 14 priority landscapes in Northeast India.
• It asks for the corridors between those landscapes to be restored.

Prelims

Meghalaya put a mission of its own behind the national plan within weeks of its release.

• The State launched Mission Clouded Leopard in August 2026, for the cat it counts as its own.

Background reading: The Hindu, 6 Aug 2026: Meghalaya launches Mission Clouded Leopard (opens in a new tab)

Prelims

• The tiger Panthera tigris is India's national animal and the apex predator of its forests.
• It is Endangered on the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
• It is a Schedule I species under the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972.
• In India it lives in tropical moist and dry deciduous forest, mangrove and terai grassland, in tiger reserves spread across the country.
• Poaching is its main threat, alongside the loss of undisturbed core habitat and conflict with the people who live in and around the reserves.
• Project Tiger, launched in 1973, is the conservation programme, run by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), a statutory body under the same Act.

Prelims

Protection costs money, and the money for tiger landscapes has so far come out of forest budgets. The Alliance has now signed with a development bank, on the argument that a tiger landscape is natural capital and can be financed as such.

• The International Big Cat Alliance (IBCA) was launched by India at Mysuru in April 2023, marking 50 years of Project Tiger.
• It is headquartered in India and covers seven big cats: the tiger, lion, leopard, snow leopard, cheetah, jaguar and puma.
• It signed a memorandum of understanding with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) at a tiger landscapes workshop organised with the NTCA.
• The workshop's case was that a landscape should be managed whole rather than reserve by reserve.
• The ADB was founded in 1966 and is headquartered in Manila.