The king of jungle gets peanuts in Gujarat

AHMEDABAD: After severe drubbing by Comptroller Auditor General (CAG) recently over going slow on implementation of conservation of lions, the Gujarat government has finally approved Project Lion on lines of the central-governmentfunded Project Tiger.
Ironically, the state government has made allocation of Rs 4.96 crore for the project for 525 lions as per Census 2015 which translates to a grant Rs 95,000 per lion. This allocation is peanuts as compared to Rs 437 crore grant approved for Project Tiger by the central government. Last count pegged the number of tigers in India at 2,226, translating to Rs 19.37 lakh grant for each tiger.

The decision approving Project Lion was taken at a top-level meeting chaired by forest minister Ganpat Vasava and senior forest officials on Thursday. The meeting was held to deliberate over rising concern about 184 deaths of lions due to natural and unnatural reasons in past two years. Recently, the Gujarat high court issued notices to the state government in a suo motu PIL seeking explanation over unnatural deaths of lions.

Principal chief conservator of forest (PCCF) G K Sinha said that Project Lion will primarily focus on habitat management of lion landscape. “This would include development of new corridors; management of corridors identified outside the protected area and other activities to put conservation on fast track,” said Sinha.

It needs mention that CAG report tabled in state assembly recently had fumed over government not approving new habitat for lions since 2008 despite a 55% increase of lions outside the protected area.The governance watchdog also took government to task over slow implementation of Wildlife Genomics Research Project for genome mapping and lion conservation.