WORLD LION DAY 2022: Celebrating royalty is in human nature so why should the ‘King of the jungle” not be celebrated as well? August 10 is the day we celebrate the king of the jungle in the form of World Lion Day. The day aims to spread awareness of lions and the urgent need to strive toward their conservation. Lions are silently in danger of going extinct worldwide. But this wasn’t always a worry.
Lions supposedly wandered amiably through Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East some three million years ago. But a lot has changed, and the number of lions has significantly decreased as a result. Over the course of five decades, the global lion population has decreased by about 95%, necessitating a need to work towards its conservation, which World Lion Day emphasises on.
World Lion Day: History
In 2013, the first World Lion Day was observed. Dereck and Beverly Joubert, from the Big Cat Initiative and National Geographic, founded it. Their objective was to safeguard lions in their natural environment. Additionally, they aimed to collaborate on safety measures with localities that are close to wild cats.
World Lion Day: Significance
The purpose of World Lion Day, as previously indicated, is to increase public awareness of the significance of lion conservation. Lions are designated as a vulnerable species on the Red List of Threatened Species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). According to NewsOnAIR, there are currently between 30,000 and 100,000 lions left in the world. To ensure the safety of lions, it is crucial to increase public awareness of the threats they face, protect their natural habitat, and build more of these kinds of habitats.
Lion population in India
With the exception of Africa, the number of wild lions has drastically decreased worldwide, but the big animals have settled naturally in India. It is interesting to note that particularly in Gir Forest, which is home to the only wild population of lions outside of Africa, their population has continuously expanded in India.
The population of Asiatic lions has steadily increased in Gujarat’s Gir forest and the larger Saurashtra protected area after experiencing a long period of decline. Between 2015 and 2020, their population increased from 523 to 674. The much larger African lions are a distant relative of the Asiatic lions of India.
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