Gujarat lions may find new home in Mulayam's dist

Gujarat’s pride lions may find a new home in Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav’s native district of Etawah. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jan 20, 2013, 24:46:36 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Gujarat’s pride lions may find a new home in Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav’s native district of Etawah.

The Uttar Pradesh government has got approval from the Central Zoo Authority to set up a lion safari in 50 acres of forestland, just five kms away from Etawah town, and wants the big cats of Gir lineage, the only Asiatic lions in wild in India.

Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi had earlier refused to relocate lions from their only home in the wild in India --- Gir National Park --- to Kuno in Madhya Pradesh on the ground that he will not part with Gujarati pride.

Uttar Pradesh, however, might not face similar fate as it has decided to get lions of Gir lineage from zoos, instead of wild as insisted by BJP ruled Madhya Pradesh government. The Central Zoo Authority can instruct the zoo officials to relocate animals from one zoo to another, if its finds the new facility to be suitable for the job.

A senior UP government official said a couple of lions each having established Gir descendants were been sought from Rajkot and Hyderabad zoos. “Asiatic lions are most beautiful and charming with whom people identify themselves,” the official said, adding that lions from two different zoos would be bought to maintain genetic diversity to prevent any chances of inbreeding.

The UP government would be building an animal breeding center, two animal houses to keep the lions during night hours and a vetnary hostpial in the safari to be surrounded by a green buffer zone in 300 hectares. A motorable road will allow people to watch the lions in a big enclosure.

Yadav had promised lion safari costing Rs 5.6 crore in Etawah when he was state Chief Minister but the project was dumped after his defeat in 2007 assembly elections to BSP’s Mayawati.

Yadav’s pet project was revived by his son Akhilesh Yadav, now UP chief minister, and a group of senior Indian Forest Service officials have been given the job to ensure that Etawah have lions by next year. “We have most of the approvals,” the official said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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