GIR SANCTUARY, India (AP) - A peacock shrieks. A monkey
scrambles higher into the fire-colored canopy of a kesudo tree.
And an Asiatic lion — one of the last few hundred in the wild —
pads across the dusty earth of a west Indian sanctuary that is
its only refuge from the modern world. Within the guarded
confines of this dry forest in Gujarat state, the lions have
been rescued from near-extinction. A century ago, fewer than 50
remained. Today more than 400 fill the park and sometimes wander
into surrounding villages and farmland. But the lions'
precarious return is in jeopardy. Experts warn their growing
numbers could be their undoing. Crowded together, they are more
vulnerable to disease and natural disaster. There is little new
territory for young males to claim, increasing chances for
inbreeding, territorial conflict or males killing the young.
Conservationists agree these lions need a second home fast, and
far from Gir. Government-backed experts in the 1990s settled on
a rugged and hilly sanctuary called K