Pride Goes Before A Fall

Could Gujarat's forest officials have inadvertently triggered the death of 23 lions in Gir National Park and Wildlife Sanctuary? ISHAN KUKRETI in Gujarat and RAJAT GHAI in Delhi investigate

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IT'S MID noon at Gujarat’s Khisari village. A group of six men stands near a cow carcass that lies in a bylane. “A lion killed it last night. Actually, it killed two and consumed one. It will return tonight to take this,” says Manobhai Veerjibhai Maladia, one of the men standing, whose house is around the corner. When asked why no one had removed it, Maladia said that the only family in the village that skinned dead cattle had quit the business after vigilantes flogged four people in Una district for carrying cows in 2016.

Khisari village borders the Dalkhania range, one of the 16 forest ranges of the Gir National Park and Wildlife Sanctuary in southwest Gujarat. Remarkably, it was also the abode of all the 23 Asiatic lions (Panthera leo persica) that died between September 12 and October 1. This is one fourth of the deaths in Gir the year before. Is there a link between the village and the death of lions this year?

Later that evening on October 10, this reporter saw the cow carcass on a dry riverbed near the Dalkhania range, and a dog snapping at it.“Since no one in the village is willing to deal with cow carcasses anymore, we ask the forest department to take them away,” says Himmatbhai Narayanbhai, sarpanch of Khisari. “But of late, the department has been refusing to dispose carcasses, particularly after the lion deaths. Therefore we dumped the dead cow outside the village,” Narayanbhai adds.

Tests by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) showed that 21 of the 23 lions were suffering from the canine distemper disease. This highly contagious and fatal airborne disease is caused by the canine distemper virus (CDV) that spreads from dogs to bovines and waterbodies, before reaching big cats (see ‘Giant killer’ on