The London Zoo is coming to the rescue of India's endangered Gir lions with a 5.7-million-pound project as part of international efforts to save the Asian breed of the big cat.
The project by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) that runs London Zoo includes plans to increase the size of its lion enclosure four-fold and fund conservation work on the last remaining wild population of Asiatic lions at Gir Forest National Park in Gujarat.
ZSL director David Field said the effort to increase the number of Asiatic lions from five to as many as 12 in a new enclosure will allow the zoo to play a greater part in a captive breeding programme in a drive to prevent the subspecies from going extinct.
"During the (British) Raj in India, huge lion hunts were responsible for the widespread decimation of lions in India. I think it's about time we gave something back," he told the Independent on Sunday.
Some estimates say that in the early part of the 20th century numbers of the Asiatic lion or Panthera leo persica, fell to under 20 worldwide.
There are now more than 400 lions living in Gir.
Field said that saving the Asiatic lion, slightly smaller with a larger tail tuft than its African cousin, presented "an incredible conservation challenge", although "the population in India is stable, in fact growing just a little bit".
Ir Forest National Park is surrounded by urban areas and, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, there are even fears that the current size of the lion population "is larger than the estimated carrying capacity of the habitat and prey base".
The new enclosure at London Zoo would, if it secures planning permission, provide a range of different kinds of environments such as places where the lions can curl up and look at the public, high points where they can survey London, and areas of dense foliage where they can hide.
"I think the lions can expect something very special," Field added.
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