IWN Report — Friday, 29 May 2026
Seven Asiatic lions have died in Gujarat’s Gir landscape in ten days. In Madhya Pradesh, tigers at Kanha died from canine distemper virus — CDV — earlier this month. Two diseases. Two species. Two states. Both outbreaks were anticipated. Both are now active at the same time.
What is happening in Gir
Between 17 and 27 May 2026, seven Asiatic lions — including four cubs — died in the Gir East and Gir West forest divisions of Gujarat. The deaths prompted Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel to convene a high-level review meeting in Gandhinagar on 27 May. Seventeen lions showing symptoms of illness have been placed under isolation, and veterinary teams have been deployed across the Gir East, Gir West, and Greater Gir landscape for field monitoring and sample collection. Eight animals have tested positive for an infectious virus, though laboratory confirmation of the specific pathogen is still awaited.
The suspected cause, identified by forest officials and communicated publicly by Gujarat Forest and Environment Minister Arjun Modhwadia, is babesiosis — a tick-borne parasitic disease caused by Babesia protozoa that invade and destroy red blood cells. Babesia parasites are transmitted primarily through the bite of infected ticks, and summer — with its elevated tick activity and livestock movement — is their peak transmission season. The disease causes progressive anaemia, high fever, respiratory distress, and in severe cases, organ failure and death.
Minister Modhwadia stated that two deaths are officially suspected to be directly linked to Babesia infection; the remaining deaths were attributed to infighting and other causes. However, the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, Dr Jaipal Singh, confirmed that the dead lions showed signs consistent with infectious viral disease, and that laboratory reports on all samples are expected within a week. A second pathogen — canine distemper virus, or CDV — has also been named as a possibility. CDV, though primarily a disease of dogs and other carnivores, is known to be highly dangerous to big cats and has historically devastated lion populations in Africa.
As a preventive measure, large-scale deworming and tick-control treatment has been carried out on approximately 350 lions across the Tulsishyam, Khambha, and Dhari ranges. Beat guards have been deployed for close surveillance, with instructions to identify any animal showing signs of weakness or infection and alert veterinary teams immediately.
Why Gir is particularly vulnerable
The Asiatic lion’s geographic concentration is both its most celebrated conservation achievement and its most acute vulnerability. Gujarat’s 2025 census recorded 891 Asiatic lions — a 32 per cent rise from 2020 — across the Greater Gir landscape, now spread across 11 districts. That recovery is remarkable. It is also the reason the population carries singular disease risk: every lion in the world lives in a connected landscape in western Gujarat. There is no backup population. There is no second stronghold.
This is not a new concern. In 2018, a combined CDV and Babesia outbreak killed 23 Asiatic lions in the Gir East division — at the time, the largest single disease mortality event in the species’ modern history. That outbreak triggered a national review, vaccination drives using imported poly-vaccines, and formal documentation of the CDV risk to Gir’s lions by wildlife health experts. The 2018 outbreak was followed by official pledges to improve veterinary infrastructure, increase monitoring of the domestic dog population in adjacent villages — the primary source of CDV — and establish rapid-response protocols for future outbreaks.
The May 2026 deaths are the first significant cluster since. Whether the response infrastructure built after 2018 has functioned as intended will be apparent from the laboratory results and from whether the isolation and treatment measures now underway succeed in containing the outbreak before it spreads further.
What is happening in Madhya Pradesh
The Gir outbreak has occurred alongside — and in part because of — a renewed national focus on disease as a threat to big cats, driven by the CDV deaths at Kanha Tiger Reserve in early May 2026. A tigress and four of her cubs died in the Sarhi range of Kanha between 29 April and 8 May; subsequent laboratory confirmation from the School of Wildlife Forensic and Health in Jabalpur identified canine distemper virus as the cause. IWN reported on this in detail on 8 May.
The Kanha deaths brought Madhya Pradesh’s tiger death toll for 2026 to 27 in just five months. For context: the state recorded 55 tiger deaths across all of 2025 — itself the highest figure ever recorded by any Indian state since Project Tiger launched in 1973. In 2026, the state is on pace to match or exceed that figure before the year ends. Nationally, India lost 166 tigers in 2025, the second-highest in five years, with 60 per cent of those deaths occurring outside protected areas.
The MP mortality pattern has drawn sustained criticism from wildlife conservationists and activists. Ajay Dubey, who has filed a public interest litigation in the Madhya Pradesh High Court on the issue, has documented what he describes as inadequate on-ground monitoring, inconsistent forensic documentation, weak surveillance of poaching networks, and slow implementation of the NTCA’s 2020 Standard Operating Procedure on stray and feral dogs in tiger reserves. The SOP mandates vaccination of all free-ranging dogs within five kilometres of a tiger reserve — precisely the measure that, if fully implemented, would reduce CDV transmission risk. Its implementation status at Kanha’s Sarhi range at the time of the outbreak has not been publicly confirmed by the forest department or NTCA.
The shared thread: CDV, dogs, and the cost of delay
CDV connects both outbreaks. At Kanha, it killed tigers directly. At Gir, it is one of two pathogens under investigation in the current lion deaths. In both cases, the proximate source is the same: free-ranging domestic dogs that carry the virus into forest edges where big cats hunt, drink, and rest.
CDV does not respect reserve boundaries. It moves through the dog populations of the hundreds of villages embedded in and adjacent to India’s tiger and lion landscapes. The technical requirements for containing it — systematic, regular vaccination of free-ranging dogs across buffer zones, coordinated across state forest departments, local veterinary services, and panchayat-level animal husbandry bodies — are well-understood. They are also resource-intensive, logistically difficult, and structurally dependent on the kind of inter-departmental coordination that Indian wildlife governance has historically struggled to sustain.
India is now, simultaneously, watching lions die in Gir and waiting for the post-mortem results of cheetah cubs that died at Kuno sixteen days ago. The convergence is not a coincidence. It reflects the reality of managing large carnivore populations in close proximity to dense human and livestock settlements, without the veterinary infrastructure those populations require.
What the next two weeks will determine
The immediate question in Gir is whether the isolation and treatment of seventeen lions, combined with the tick-control and surveillance operations now underway, will contain the current cluster before it spreads to neighbouring ranges. The 2018 outbreak was eventually contained — but only after 23 lions had died and after a national emergency response that included imported vaccines and expert consultations. The scale of response now visible in Gujarat suggests the forest department is taking the current situation seriously. Whether it is moving fast enough, and whether the veterinary infrastructure is adequate for the task, will be visible in the laboratory results expected within the week.
For Madhya Pradesh, the CDV/Kanha post-mortem confirmation has already produced the CDV SOP reminder it needed to produce. What it has not yet produced is a public accounting of why the SOP was not preventing transmission in a landscape as monitored as Kanha’s Sarhi range. That accounting is still outstanding.
IWN will continue to cover both the Gir outbreak and the Madhya Pradesh tiger mortality situation as developments emerge. This report will be updated with laboratory results from Gujarat as and when they are confirmed officially.
Sources: IANS / ProKerala · Republic World · Deccan Herald · ThePrint · National Herald India · Times of India Ahmedabad (27 May 2026)