Sanctuary | In The Field
much about this fi erce mother, who
defended her cubs from intruding
males, walked past villages and people
sleeping outside their huts, hunted
down nilgai and wild pigs, let go of her
independent cubs to solicit a younger
male and raise another litter. With a
lot of patience, uncountable nervous
moments and scares, numerous thorns
in our boots and a few in our feet,
bruised forearms and tattered caps,
we gained the confi dence of all our
study lions, although sporadic charges
and their occasional mood-swings kept
us on our toes. Such familiarisation
helped us gain acceptance in their
families to an extent that we could
sip hurriedly made tea while they
snored peacefully a few metres away
in the day and follow them through
the long nights when they roamed the
countryside as whitish ghosts in the
dimly-lit darkness, in search of prey.
I gathered a lot more than just data
from these beautiful cats who taught
me the power of patience, compassion
and bonding as we witnessed in awe
the many secrets of a carnivore
sharing space with its biped hetero-
specifi cs. Information from these
four lionesses (and their groups) and
previously-collared individuals from
the landscape helped us slowly join the
bits of the puzzle about how a large
carnivore co-exists with humans. We
could infer that lionesses inhabiting
outside the PA used areas of about
110 sq. km., twice as large as their
cousins living within PAs. Male lions
ranged over areas three times larger
than their PA counterparts. This was
primarily because of the patchiness
of available resources (food and
refuge) in the human-dominated
landscape, which required them to
have large territories to encompass
their minimum requirements. Non-
cultivated and relatively less disturbed
green patches of more than three to
four square kilometres were ideal for
breeding lionesses to hide and raise
their cubs, crucial for sustaining a
viable lion population in the landscape.
The lions used thorny thickets, as small
as one hectare, as day-time refuges to
conceal themselves from people and
roamed around human-settlements
and crop-fi elds at night in search
of nilgai, wild pigs and unguarded
livestock. These day-time refugesLong familiarisation with the study-area lions and their groups helped the author and his
assistants to observe them up-close and personal.steps were met with a series of angry
growls from just behind the closest
bush and we knew she would charge
if pressed further. We stood there,
adrenaline rushing in our veins, while
Bhiku muttered from between his
teeth pointing towards a small
gap in the otherwise dense thicket.
A tuft of black-hair twitched as
if pulled by invisible strings and I
recognised it to be the tail-tuft of
a lioness. The growls stopped and
the tuft vanished, followed by the
soft crackle of twigs when suddenly
a golden head popped out of the
bush, ears tensed, lips curled and eyes
cutting through us! She was barely
10 m. away and she meant business!
With no time to lose we thrashed
our sticks and shouted loud, the only
tried-and-tested deterrent of a lion
charge, and after a few minutes of
growls and hisses, which felt like an
eternity, she obliged. She stopped,
turned and vanished into the thickets
as fast as she had appeared. One
lesson that I have learnt from mysupervisor and assistants was “never
show your back to a charging lion, or
chances of survival would go down
from slim to none!”
Over the next several hours,
we slowly gained her confi dence as
we could see her two cubs peeping
behind their mother’s body, who lay
sprawled on her back just beside
a half-eaten cattle carcass. I was
happy and satisfi ed. It was in these
moments when one felt dejected
and lost, that the true meaning of
perseverance and patience could be
found. I never had felt more alive than
while listening to an angry lioness
growling at close quarters. I guess it
is for such moments of indescribable
exultation that we, all my fellow
wildlife researchers and biologists,
painstakingly work in harsh conditionsLEARNING FROM LIONS
That was June 2014. For the
next three years, we followed her
persistently (even changed her collar
once in between) and discovered soGIR RESEARCH TEAM