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\n Five-year-old Pulsing Ajnera was playing with his brothers in a field near their home in the western Indian state of Gujarat, when a lion \u201ccame out of nowhere,\u201d his grieving father told CNN.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThis lion grabbed the child, my youngest, and left. My family tried everything to rescue him. They threw stones at the lion and a few wooden sticks as well, but (it) dragged him into the jungle,\u201d Heera Ajnera said. The boy\u2019s body was later recovered.\n <\/p>\n
\n Pulsing was one of seven people in India killed by lions in the year to June 2025, taking the total number of fatal attacks in five years to more than 20. Attacks on cattle have almost doubled during the same period, Gujarat officials told CNN.\n <\/p>\n
\n Sporting an unmistakable dark mane and unique folds of skin along their bellies, Asiatic lions are slightly smaller than their African cousins. They once prowled the Middle East and Asia but now Gujarat is home to the world\u2019s last population of wild Asiatic lions.\n <\/p>\n
\n The lions were hunted to the brink of extinction in India, before a ban on killing the cats was put in place in Gujarat a century ago. Recent conservation efforts, have seen the state\u2019s lion population rise by 30% to 891 in the last five years.\n <\/p>\n
\n Conservationists say a large part of the success stems from a unique human-lion relationship, where locals profit from the presence of lions, and lions are given space to roam. But that symbiotic relationship is being tested as the lion population grows.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cLions have been found in basement parking lots of hotels\u2026on top of people\u2019s homes. They are resting on terraces. They\u2019re sitting there and roaring,\u201d said wildlife biologist Ravi Chellam, the coordinator of conservation network the Biodiversity Collaborative.\n <\/p>\n
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\n \u201cThe minute a lion moves into human-dominated habitats, the probability (of it attacking humans) just increases,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n
\n For more than a decade, Chellam and other conservationists have been pushing the Gujarat government to move some lions to a second habitat outside the state.\n <\/p>\n
\n But Gujarat\u2019s lions haven\u2019t gone anywhere, and their numbers are continuing to grow \u2013 creating the potential for conflict \u2013 despite a Supreme Court ruling ordering the government to relocate them.\n <\/p>\n
An expanding population<\/p>\n
\n Gir National Park \u2013 a 545-square-mile protected area about the size of Los Angeles City \u2013 was established in 1965 to protect endangered species, including Asiatic lions. Most of Gujarat\u2019s Asiatic lions now live outside the park\u2019s borders, mixing with humans in towns and villages.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cTheoretically, it\u2019s a success story because that was the whole intention of a conservation project \u2013 to increase the number of individuals of that species,\u201d Gujarat-based conservationist Jehan Bhujwala told CNN.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cBut when you have too many animals, they claim space outside of the protected area\u2026 and then they start coming into conflict with local (people),\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n
\n Bhujwala says India\u2019s conservation model was never intended to separate lions from humans, noting that villages are built within national parks.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThey all coexisted, and that coexistence, that tolerance, is something which is very unique to India\u2019s conservation history,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n
\n Local people rely on lions to generate tourism income, and in return big cats feed on old cattle abandoned by local herders, wrote Yadvendradev Vikramsinh Jhala, the former dean of Wildlife Institute of India, in an academic paper published last year.\n <\/p>\n
\n Jhala and his co-authors said the lions also prey on pigs and nilgais \u2013 a type of antelope – which helps eliminate animals the local farmers consider to be pests.\n <\/p>\n
\n The community has learned to live with lions because their economic benefits outweigh the risks, said Jhala.\n <\/p>\n
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\n \u201cSuch a level of coexistence between people and a large carnivore is not seen anywhere in the world,\u201d he told CNN.\n <\/p>\n
\n The tie with the local people runs deep.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIf there are Maldharis, there are lions. We are one,\u201d said Lakshman, a 32-year-old farmer from the local Maldhari community.\n <\/p>\n
\n But Lakshman, who farms buffaloes and sells their milk to support his five children and wife, said he had noticed an uptick in lion attacks on cattle, which experts say have deepened grievances within the pastoral community.\n <\/p>\n
\n Conservationists warn the dynamic between lions and humans could soon change if more is not done to address the lions\u2019 growing population.\n <\/p>\n
\n Chellam is among a group of conservationists who have been urging the government to move some of the lions to Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary, in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. A survey he and other scientists completed three decades ago found it to be a suitable habitat for lion conservation.\n <\/p>\n
\n The call was at the heart of a court battle jointly filed by the Centre for Environment Law and the World Wide Fund for Nature India against the government in 1994 to force local officials in Gujarat to act. In 2013, the Supreme Court of India ruled in favor of the environmental groups, directing the Ministry of Environment to take \u201curgent steps for the re-introduction of Asiatic Lions from Gir Forests to Kuno.\u201d It was to be initiated within six months, starting with the formation of an expert committee.\n <\/p>\n
\n Chellam, who\u2019s on the committee, said the last meeting was held in 2016. He says by not convening regular meetings, the government is dragging its feet on the Supreme Court order.\n <\/p>\n
\n More than a decade after the ruling, the lions remain solely in Gujarat. Further complicating the process is the arrival of cheetahs imported from South Africa and Namibia to the Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary.\n <\/p>\n
\n The first cheetahs arrived in India in 2022 under a historic plan to revive the species 70 years<\/a> after their extinction in the country. Some cubs died soon after, but 31 are now living in Kuno, indicating \u201csuccessful population growth,\u201d according to a paper published in May that countered criticism of the program.<\/a>\n <\/p>\n
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