@mattiasklumofficial

A young asiatic lion devouring a newly caught nilgai calf in front of my camera in Gir National park, India. Most people think of lions as strictly African beasts, but only because they’ve been killed off almost everywhere else. Ten thousand years ago lions spanned vast sections of the globe, and so did people, who—as we multiplied and organized—put pressure on competitors at the top of the food chain. Now lions hold only a small fraction of their former habitat, and Asiatic lions, a subspecies that split from African lions perhaps 100,000 years ago, hang on to an almost impossibly small slice of their former domain. India is the proud steward of these 400 or so lions, which live primarily in a 560-square-mile (1,450-square-kilometer) sanctuary. #asiaticlion #girforest #india #throwback #protectbiodiversity #mattiasklum @natgeo @thephotosociety @irisalexandrov @alexandrovklumofficial