Why are India’s lions increasingly swapping the jungle for the beach?

The last of the world’s Asiatic lions live in Gujarat state, but as the apex predators outgrow their forest reserve, they are moving to the seaside

It was one morning, while walking on the beach in Gujarat, that wildlife expert Meena Venkataraman spotted a pair of paw prints. But this was no dog or fox that had visited. The footprints belonged to an Asiatic lion, the king of the jungle – and, increasingly, the beach.

Once found throughout Mesopotamia, Persia and the Indian subcontinent, the Asiatic lion was almost driven to extinction by the early 1900s due to hunting and habitat loss, before a nawab in the western Indian state of Gujarat intervened. Today, the state is the only home of the Asiatic lion.