Disease killed 62 Asiatic lions in Gujarat in the 12 months ending 31 July 2026, Forest and Environment Minister Arjun Modhwadia told the state Assembly on Friday, 11 September. The dead included 17 adult males, 17 adult females and 28 cubs. Modhwadia gave the figures in reply to senior Congress MLA Shailesh Parmar during Question Hour on the last day of the monsoon session, as reported by Deccan Chronicle and Vibes of India.
The causes come from post-mortem reports. They include septicaemia, pneumonia and haemorrhagic pneumonia, anaemia, kidney and liver failure, multi-organ failure, heart attack, paralysis, encephalitis, gastroenteritis and roundworm infestation. No single disease dominates the list, and the reply did not describe any outbreak.
How to read the number
The 62 covers disease deaths only. The reply, as reported, gave no total for the year, so it leaves out lions that died in open wells, on railway tracks, on roads or by electrocution. Readers should not set it beside last year’s Assembly figure. In September 2025, then forest minister Mulubhai Bera reported 166 lion deaths from all causes between August 2024 and July 2025, and 141 in the year before, according to Outlook and The Tribune. He counted 41 of those 307 deaths as unnatural, 20 of them in wells. Those totals answered a different question. Setting 62 against 166 would suggest a sharp fall that the data does not show.
The cubs need context as well. Cubs made up 28 of the 62 disease deaths, about 45%. Big-cat cubs die young at high rates in the wild, and the May 2025 census counted 225 cubs among 891 lions. A cub death count on its own says little. A rising share over several years would matter more, and the state has not published figures in that form.
A population spread thin across Saurashtra
The 2025 census found 891 lions, up from 674 in 2020, spread over about 35,000 sq km in 58 talukas across 11 districts, from Junagadh and Gir Somnath to Amreli, Bhavnagar, Porbandar and Devbhoomi Dwarka. Fewer than half lived inside Gir National Park and its linked sanctuaries, according to census figures reported by Down To Earth. The rest roam farmland, coastal scrub and riverbeds among villages and cattle.
That spread shapes the disease risk. Lions outside the sanctuary eat livestock, drink from the same water and cross paths with village dogs. In 2018 the forest department lost a group of lions in the Dalkhaniya range of Gir East, where tests found canine distemper virus, a disease dogs carry. The measures Modhwadia listed follow from that experience: deworming and tick removal for lions, blood sampling, vaccination of livestock in villages inside and around the sanctuaries, treatment centres at nine locations, a lion ambulance, and rapid-response teams backed by trackers and volunteer “wildlife friends”.
What it means for people in lion country
For families in Junagadh, Amreli and Gir Somnath, the reply points to work that happens in their own villages. Vaccination drives for cattle and buffalo are part of lion protection. Forest staff also depend on villagers to report a lion that looks weak, limps or stays in one spot for days, because early treatment at a rescue centre can save it. The older danger has not gone away: open wells caused about half of the unnatural deaths counted in 2023 to 2025.
What to watch
Two things would give a clearer picture. The first is a full annual breakdown: total deaths, disease deaths and unnatural deaths, published together each year so trends can be tracked. The second is progress on a second home for the species. The census counted 17 lions in the Barda area near Porbandar, the state’s chosen alternative home. As long as most of the world’s Asiatic lions live in one region, one fast-moving infection could hit a large share of them.
Sources: Deccan Chronicle, Vibes of India, Outlook, The Tribune, Down To Earth
This report was written with AI assistance from the publicly reported sources linked here; each fact was cross-checked against at least two of them.