lion’s face and neck. The Asiatic lion’s mane is noticeably shorter than the African lion’s.
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Asiatic lions also have a long fold of skin on their underside , whereas not many
African lions have this.
Well, I’d like to talk to you now about the Gir sanctuary in India. That’s where I’ve just
come back from. The sanctuary was establishedspecifically to protect the Asiatic lion.
It’s
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1,450 square kilometres an area and most of it is forest. There are now around
three hundred Asiatic lions in India and almost all of them are in this sanctuary.
But despite living in a sanctuary, which makes them safe from hunters, they still face a
number of problems that threaten their survival . One of these is the ever-present danger
of
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disease. This is what killed more than a third of Africa’s Serengeti lions in 1994 ,
and people are fearful that something similar could happen in the Gir Sanctuary and kill off
many of the Asiatic lions there.
India’s lions are particularly vulnerable because they have a limited gene pool. The reason
for this is interesting – it’s because all of them are descended from a few dozen that were
saved by a
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