Asian Elephants are the most endangered elephants. Source: Rakeshkdogra, via Wikimedia Commons Ads by Google What is an Endangered Animal? An endangered animal is an animal that is at risk of becoming extinct. Extinction means there are no animals of that kind that exist today. Dinosaurs are one large group of animals that have become extinct; others include dodo birds, mammoths, and even some species of tigers. There are many reasons why an animal could be at risk of becoming extinct. An animal may be threatened by environmental changes, destruction of habitat, shortage of food supply, or being hunted. Many of these causes can be prevented if all humans got together and decided to actively preserve animal life. Many areas that used to be home to a lot of animals, have been turned into places where humans now either live or go, such as a subdivision or mall. Some believe that global change, where the earth is warming up, is causing some animals to lose their home due to changes in weather across the Earth. This has many scientists concerned, especially for animals that live on ice caps such as penguins. Another common reason an animal becomes endangered is because of being hunted by humans. There are many laws surrounding those of endangered animals to prevent their complete extinction. Yet there are people who ignore these laws, and will still kill animals for either their fur or meat. These people are called poachers. So what animals are endangered? Is there anything we can do to prevent them from becoming extinct? Well, many animals are endangered, so I am only able to list a few. Yet, there is a lot we can do for these animals and the animals in our neighborhood to prevent them from becoming endangered or worse, extinct. Siberian Tiger A Siberian Tiger is a critically endangered animal, which means that they are in danger of becoming extinct in the immediate future. Source: S. Taheri, edited by Fir0002, via Wikimedia Commons What Animals Are Endangered Many Kinds of Tigers are Endangered Animals: There are nine different types of tigers. Three of these kinds are extinct. The picture to the right is a picture of a Siberian Tiger. The Siberian Tiger is considered critically endangered. Being critically endangered means that they could become extinct in the immediate future due to having very few living Siberian Tigers left. There is only one type of tiger that is more endangered than the Siberian Tiger, which is the South China Tiger. The South China Tiger is one of the ten most endangered animals in the entire world according to china.org. There is believed to be only fifty-nine South China Tigers alive, and none live in their original habitat. This means they are extinct in the wild. Bengal Tigers are another endangered animal, but unlike the South China Tiger, they still live in the wild. They believe that there is less than two thousand. That is less tigers than people who live in most cities. Elephants are very protective of their young. This is one thing that helps them survive despite their decreasing numbers. Source: Siddharth Maheshwari, via Wikimedia Commons Elephants are Endangered Animals. There are two kinds of elephants, the African elephant and the Asian elephant. Both kinds are endangered. There are believed to be around five-hundred-thousand African elephants in the wild. This may sound like a lot, but only twenty-five years ago, there were more than one million. As you can see the numbers are decreasing very quickly. That means in twenty-five years, half the elephants that lived, have died. Asian elephants are even more endangered than African elephants. It is believed that there are less than 50,000. This is only a tenth of the number of African elephants. These are becoming more extinct due to habitat loss and from people poaching, or hunting them. Leatherback Sea Turtle Leatherback sea turtles need uninhabited beaches to live. Source: Ryan Somma, via Wikimedia Commons The Leatherback Sea Turtle is An Endangered Species The leatherback sea turtle is the world's largest turtle. Unfortunately, it is also the most endangered turtle, as well. It has become endangered for many reasons, one being because humans have taken their eggs as keepsakes. Many people find it neat to find a turtle egg on the beach, and pick it up. They don't realize they are killing off an entire species. If you see eggs on the beach, feel free to take a picture, but leave the eggs alone. Another reason they are dying is because of plastic ingestion, that is why it is important to never litter. Plastic can get into the ocean, and many animals will eat it thinking it is food. These have effected the population of leatherback sea turtles, but the biggest reason for their decreasing numbers is the loss of beaches where they can habitate. The more beaches we humans have to swim on, the less there are for other creatures to live. Snow Leopards Snow leopards are very beautiful animals. Unfortunately, their beauty has caused poachers to hunt them. Source: Eric Kilby from USA, via Wikimedia Commons Leopards are Endangered Animals There are at least nine different subspecies of leopards. Many of these are endangered. One subspecies of leopards that are endangered is the amur leopards The amur leopards are the most endangered of all the leopards. There are only forty left on this earth. They lived in the same area as the Siberian tiger. Both have been effected by the decreasing area where they can survive. Also people used to hunt them, because their coats are very beautiful. Now, with the limited number of amur leopards, the chance of having babies has decreased, causing the numbers to decrease even further. The snow leopard is another leopard that is endangered. There are around five thousand snow leopards left on this Earth in the wild. A big problem for the snow leopard is that the animals they prey on are decreasing. As their food decreases, so does the number of surviving snow leopards. Learn More About Endangered Animals National Geographic Animal Encyclopedia: 2,500 Animals with Photos, Maps, and More! Amazon Price: $12.50 List Price: $24.95 The Best Book of Endangered and Extinct Animals Amazon Price: $6.98 List Price: $12.95 Endangered Animals Color and Learn Book: The Coloring Book for Kids Who Love Endangered Animals Amazon Price: $4.68 List Price: $8.98 What Can You Do To Help Endangered Animals The biggest thing we can do to help endangered animals is to take care of our world. Maybe tigers and leopards don't live where you do, but many animals do. They need protection, just like other animals do. There are many ways that we can protect animals by taking care of our world. Recycle: We need to make sure that we are recycling plastic, tin, and paper, so that we don't use our world's natural resources. Everytime paper is made, or a bottle is made, resources from our Earth are being used. Some of these resources are found where animals live, and to get to them, we need to disrupt their habitat. By making sure we reduce, reuse, recycle, we allow places where endangered animals live to be protected from being destroyed, because people will not be in as pursuit of new resources. Reduce: By reducing what you use, you can also protect our Earth. One way to do this is, instead of writing on one side of paper, write on both sides. Also, when you leave a room, reduce the energy you are using by turning off the lights. Reuse: We should also choose items that can be reused, like a reusable water bottle, rather than prepackaged water bottles. By using reusable containers for our water, rather than buying bottled water, we prevent many of our resources from being used up. Another example is use a towel, rather than paper towels. Plant a Tree: Many animals use trees for shelter, protection, or even food. All big trees began as small trees. The only way to assure there are going to be big trees in the future is if there are small trees today. You can acheive this by planting trees in your neighborhood. Join an Adopt An Animal Program: There are many endangered animals in this world, and there are also a lot of organizations that help these animals. Many of these are where you can actually adopt an animal. They won't come to live with you, but you will receive a picture and information on your animal. You will also receive occassional upates on your adopted pet. It does cost money, so you'll have to discuss this with your parents, but that money will be used to find better habitats for that animal, and research for ways to help that animal thrive back in the wild. Worldwildlife.org is one place where you can find animals to adopt. Be creative, there are hundreds of ways that you can protect our earth. Feel free to share some of your ideas. 


A Symbol of India

The male Asiatic lion is slightly smaller than its African cousin. It's also generally shaggier, but possesses a much smaller mane.
The male Asiatic lion is slightly smaller than its African cousin. It's also generally shaggier, but possesses a much smaller mane.
Source: wikimedia commons

Introduction

Once, not so long ago the mighty lion, the so called ‘King of the Beasts’ roamed widely across the planet. In fact they enjoyed the widest distribution of any mammal except us. From the South American Pampas, to the frigid north of Siberia, lions stalked the vast herds of large herbivores, including the iconic woolly mammoth. Sadly today, this species has disappeared from most of its range, largely down to the rise of man. As predators ourselves, the lion became a natural competitor, so as our populations increased, so the lions decreased. Also many of the large herbivores that the lions relied upon vanished at the end of the last ice age, possibly down to climate change or human hunting or a combination of the two.
Today, the lion is the ultimate symbol of Africa, and whenever you think of them, you imagine an imposing male with that shaggy mane striding confidently across the savannah, or you imagine a strong, athletic lionesses chasing down an equally fleet footed zebra. But what we often tend to forget, is that there are still lions that live wild outside of Africa today. These are the Asiatic or Indian lions, which just a century ago roamed across vast swathes of the Asian continent, but is presently restricted to a tiny enclave in India, known as the Gir National Park.

Did You Know?

Most of us know that the Romans liked to throw any Christian prisoners to the lions in famous arenas such as the Coliseum. What most of us don't know though, is that they probably used the Asiatic lion to bring death; as they were still present in the Greek borderlands. Although they may have used the Barbary lion as well, as they were present in many of Rome's North African provinces.

Tale of Woe

As recently as 2000 years ago, the term Asiatic lion would have been considered incorrect, as their range extended right across into Southern Europe, as far west as Greece. They were numerous right across the Arabian Peninsula, and of course ranged widely across the Indian sub-continent. Over the proceeding centuries, successive waves of human empires rose and fell like the tide right across the region, and inevitably the lions gradually faded away.
Each one of the powerful civilisations that have swept across India over the last two millennia all had one common passion – the hunting of game, and thus the lion, regarded by many as the ultimate predator became a highly prised catch.
By the turn of the 20th Century, the lions that had once terrorised Roman colonists in North Africa had been reduced to a rather pitiful population teetering on the edge of extinction in the Atlas Mountains, and the Asiatic Lion had already vanished from much of their former strongholds in Asia, clinging onto existence in Iraq, India and possibly Pakistan.

Thinking of Heading to Gir?

How to get there:
Internal flights serve the nearby towns of Diu and Porbandar, you then continue by road to Gir.
When to go?
November to February is the best time to go for the best wildlife experiences. Avoid going during the hot summer (April and May) and June-September is monsoon season, so avoid that too.
Highlights:
As well as the lions; Gir is also home to leopards, striped hyenas, and smaller carnivores such as mongooses. The open grasslands are home to chital and sambar deer, wild boar, chinkara gazelles, and two species of antelope. To the north of Gir, is the Dhrangadhra Sanctuary, home to the endangered Asiatic wild ass, the ancestor of the donkey.

Royalty to the Rescue

By the turn of the 20th Century, the Asiatic subspecies of lion was literally hanging on by its retractable claws; just two dozen lived within the confines of an area of teak forest in Northern India known as Gir. The local prince was one Nawab Rasulkhanji of Junagadh, who like most men in regal power possessed an insatiable passion for hunting. Apparently he was a very good marksman, and specialised in hunting leopards. Fortunately he saw fit to spare their larger relatives, perhaps out of reverence for the lion’s status in Indian culture and folklore. Whatever it was, he took the first steps towards safeguarding the subspecies future by placing strict restrictions on hunting them.
After India’s independence in 1947, the fledgling government formalised the Nawab’s restrictions by creating special lion reserves on the Southern tip of the Kathiawar Peninsula in Gujarat, with the most famous being the Gir Wildlife Sanctuary, officially created in 1965. Over the years, the boundaries of the sanctuary have expanded by over 900 miles squared, incorporating vast tracts of dry, hilly forest; today it’s known as the Gir Conservation Area. The last census of Gir’s lions was conducted in 2010 and the good news was that there are currently 411 individuals roaming around Gir. The bad news is that, that number is deceptively high, as up to 150 lions are sub adults or cubs, and many of them will fail to make it to adulthood.

The Lions Sanctuary

A map of the Gir Conservation Area.
A map of the Gir Conservation Area.
Source: wikimedia commons

A Male Asiatic Lion

Believe it or not, this is a full grown male lion.
Believe it or not, this is a full grown male lion.
Source: wikimedia commons

Unique Characteristics

The Lions of Gir really did come very close to extinction; the best evidence for this is a rather prominent ridge of loose skin along the bellies of mostly the male lions. This extraordinary trait only crops up occasionally in their African relatives, but is widespread in the Asiatic variety. Scientists think that it arose as a result of the lions experiencing a ‘population bottleneck’. Basically, the relentless hunting carried out by humans down the ages reduced the lions to such low numbers, that they were effectively forced to inbreed. Today, all of the remaining 411 lions are closely related, their survival is by no means guaranteed, because the lack of genetic diversity leaves them vulnerable to disease and consequently threatens to undermine all of the hard work that has gone into bring the species back from the very brink of oblivion.
Apart from a few small physical differences, the Asiatic lion is ecologically similar to the African one. The nucleus of each pride is made up of a number of related females, protected by small coalitions of closely related males that work together to guard the females from any potential rivals. However, in India things are done a little differently; African prides typically consist of maybe over half a dozen females, but in Gir, a pride can literally consist of a couple of males protecting as little as two or three females. Curiously, Asiatic lions also prefer to spend more time alone than their famously social cousins in Africa.

The Lion's Chief Prey

A herd of chital deer, the primary prey of the lions of Gir.
A herd of chital deer, the primary prey of the lions of Gir.
Source: wikimedia commons
A Sambar deer stag. These deer are also a top prey item of India's other symbolic cat, the tiger.
A Sambar deer stag. These deer are also a top prey item of India's other symbolic cat, the tiger.
Source: wikimedia commons

Differences in Behaviour

So, we’ve already clarified that Asiatic Lions are slightly different in terms of the makeup of their pride, but what about their behaviour? Do subtle differences exist there too? The simple answer is yes, and the main reason behind it is food. As a general rule of thumb, the larger the prey, the more sociable the lions are likely to be. This helps to explain the relatively large lion prides that live on African savannahs packed full of large herbivores such as buffalo, wildebeest and zebra. The need to defend their kills from other cats, dogs, hyenas, and possibly early hominids probably played a key role in forcing lions to band together early on in their evolution.
It makes sense, because imagine a lone lioness out in the open with a recently downed zebra, very quickly she would attract the wrong kind of attention, so having your relatives beside you to back you up is a very sensible strategy. You don’t get as much food, but surely it’s much better to share with your family than have it stolen by a strange lion or by other scavengers.
Usually, the rule is among larger predators, that the smaller the prey the less likely that it will be lost to competitors, the reason for this is very simple, they can be eaten much faster. The Gir Lions face less competition for their food because their chief prey item is a species of spotted deer known as the chital; they’re probably the same size as the European fallow deer, so somewhere in the region of 110 pounds.
As well as their food, the landscape of Gir itself helps to keep the lions smaller than their African cousins. The lions roam a land of rolling hills, deep valleys cloaked in hundreds of acres of thick teak forest. Where the land isn’t forest, semi arid scrubland dominates and this helps to conceal the lion’s kills from other predators.
Some experts who have studied these extraordinary lions have gone as far as to suggest that the cat’s social structure is gradually breaking down. You could say that the lions were evolving, somehow becoming less like lions and more like your conventional cat. But the reality is that this remarkable behavioural shift simply indicates the tremendous flexibility of the sociability of lions.
Despite the stark differences in social structure between the two subspecies, the Asiatic lions are just as effective at hunting as the great buffalo hunters of Kruger or the elephant hunters of Northern Botswana.

Conflict

The lions of Africa and India share one common threat to their survival, the seemingly overwhelming presence of the local people and their livestock. On occasion, the Gir Lions do take domesticated buffalo and cattle that belong to the local Maldhari people. As you can imagine the loss of precious livestock leads to bitter conflict, after all if your entire livelihood is tied up in livestock, you most certainly wouldn’t want any predator picking them off at will.
By the start of the 1970s, the Indian government, conscious of losing one of India’s most powerful symbolic animals, implemented a rather radical policy. At that time, more than 4500 people and 25,000 livestock lived and moved within Gir’s boundaries. Over the next decade or so, two thirds of the local Maldhari were moved out of the area. The plan though was highly controversial and still sparks fury among the Maldhari today, but it was pivotal in saving the lions from almost certain extinction. The lions’ chief natural prey no longer faced competition from domestic livestock, and the land was now free of people cutting down trees for cattle fodder and firewood.
As an indication of just how much has changed, before the 1970s, Gir was home to just 6000 wild grazers, mostly chital, wild boar and a larger species of deer known as the sambar. In 2010, the number had grown to 65,000 ten times more than it had been just forty years previously. However, there are worrying signs that the human pressures that nearly condemned India’s last lions to extinction are returning. Today, 6000 people live within the National Park, exactly the same number that was present in 1970. The herders and their animals have access to virtually all of the area, apart from a core area where most of the lions live. An extra 100,000 people plus another 100,000 cattle and buffalo inhabit villages that dot the forests boundaries.
Astonishingly, despite these obviously worrying changes, the lions have managed to expand outside of Gir and set up small populations in small wooded areas, some of which are home to as many as one in four of the entire population. However, most areas of suitable habitat have now been occupied, which hinders further expansion and thus limits the lion’s chances of setting up prides in new areas.

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Saving India's Last Lions

In 1994 a delegation of experts and conservationists travelled from India to South Africa’s Phinda Private Game Reserve. The leader of the expedition was prominent Indian lion expert, Ravi Chellam. Chellam wished to observe how Phinda were successfully able to transport large and dangerous game animals. Phinda’s objective was simple, to recreate thriving populations by relocating lions under pressure from people into wilder, more desirable country. They aimed to re-establish lions in areas where they had disappeared decades before due to conflicts with humanity.
By the time of Chellam’s visit, the ingenious technique now dubbed ‘wild-wild translocation’ was so slick and organised that lions now roamed once again over vast swathes of their former range. Ravi and his team left South Africa, inspired and with an abundance of insights into how exactly India’s lions could be saved. The task was to try and set up a new population of Asiatic lions outside of their current base at Gir.
In the fifteen years or so that have passed since the expedition, various conservation initiatives have helped to increase the lions population, but only within Gir itself. But the lion's refuge is an island, and it’s an increasingly overcrowded island. Sadly, as of yet, the strategies successfully employed in South Africa have yet to be replicated in India. The Asiatic lion’s future still hangs by the narrowest of narrow threads.
The lion’s best and probably last hope probably lies with Gujarat’s Eastern neighbour, the state of Madhya Pradesh, which have been frantically preparing the Kuno-Palpur Wildlife Sanctuary to receive the lions that will save the species. The reserve lies around 500 miles away from Gir, and although it covers a smaller area, the surrounding landscape is dense forest, ten times bigger than anything at Gir. This is quite simply the last chance for a lion that once haunted the nightmares of the Greeks and the Romans.
The state government, along with its national partner have poured the equivalent of millions of pounds into Kuno-Palpur. Like Gir, they have taken the radical step of relocating a total of 24 villages, which in turn has led to widespread forest regeneration and a huge increase in the wild herbivore population; the only missing component is the lions themselves.
However, India’s last lions may never get a chance to roam Kuno-Palpur, there’s nothing biologically or socio-economically that’s stopping this miracle for happening. It turns out that it’s all about politics; Gujarat is fiercely proud of its lions and refuses to be parted with its ultimate status symbol. You can see their point of view, after all, the lions are a huge tourism draw, and Gujarat would certainly not want to lose such a valuable monopoly.
But Gujarat’s stance is a huge gamble, the lion’s population is small and isolated and thus highly vulnerable to disease, one epidemic could spell the end. But it’s unfair to judge Gujarat harshly, after all if there wasn’t for their hard work and dedication, the Asiatic lion would already be extinct. It’s just that they have been too successful; the lions have outgrown their home in less than fifty years, and now need a new one.
I end this hub pondering whether our descendents will still be able to travel to Gir in 100 years time, and still experience the chilling feeling that everybody experiences when they hear the mighty roar of a lion for real. Time remains to be seen, but I certainly hope so, both for the lion’s sake and our sake. If the people of India were to lose both the tiger and the lion in the near future, it would be a huge tragedy,it would quite simply mean the severance of a cultural link going back probably to the first humans that set foot in India, tens of thousands of years ago. I hope that terrible day never comes.

A Place in India's Heart

This is the flag of the Indian army. In the top right hand corner, you'll notice the three lions. Imagine if such a symbolic animal were ever to disappear.
This is the flag of the Indian army. In the top right hand corner, you'll notice the three lions. Imagine if such a symbolic animal were ever to disappear.
Source: wikimedia commons
India's national emblem. A sign of how much the lion means to Indian cultural identity.
India's national emblem. A sign of how much the lion means to Indian cultural identity.
Source: wikimedia commons
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