Mission Conservation: Lion Story
30-minutes, 2007
Ref: 609

Ten thousand years ago lions spanned vast sections of the globe. Now lions hold only a small fraction of their former habitat, and Asiatic lions, a subspecies that split from African lions perhaps 100,000 years ago, hang on to an almost impossibly small slice of their former domain. India is the proud steward of these 300 or so lions, which live primarily in a 560-square-mile (1,450-square-kilometer) sanctuary. Gir has as many lions as it can hold-too many, in fact. With territory in short supply, lions prowl the periphery of the forest and even leave it altogether, often clashing with people. In 1994 canine distemper killed more than a third of Africa's Serengeti lions-a thousand animals-a fate that could easily befall Gir's cats. These lions, saved by a prince at the turn of the 20th century, are especially vulnerable to disease because they descend from as few as a dozen individuals. "If you do a DNA fingerprint, Asiatic lions actually look like identical twins," says Stephen O'Brien, a geneticist who has studied them.