WHERE HUMANS WANT A LION'S SHARE

The Gir landscape in Saurashtra, Gujarat, has turned into a textbook case about the struggles of wildlife management in India. In mid-September, the Union government released a draft notification for an eco-sensitive zone (ESZ) around the Gir Wildlife Sanctuary (GWS).

- Jumana Shah

Earlier, a 0-10 km periphery around 1,468.16 sq km of the core territory of the GWS was considered a buffer zone which forbade the establishment of heavy, polluting industries and mining. In the revised draft, this area has shrunk substantially to a minimum of 2.78 km from the sanctuary at some places and up to a maximum of 9.5 km at others. The draft proposes a 2,061 sq km region around Gir as an ESZ spread over 196 villages in Junagadh, Amreli and Gir Somnath districts, including 17 rivers, 24,000 hectares of forest area and 1.59 lakh hectares of non-forest area. The government statement says the protected area covers four important movement corridors of Asiatic lions in their sole habitat. A local naturalist estimates that the ESZ has approximately 38 per cent less area than the earlier buffer zone. However, even this is too much for thousands of local villagers, who fear loss of livelihood and development due to the strictures that will be implemented in an ESZ. The right to protect themselves from wild animals is also an issue.