Three lion cubs were born on the night of January 11 at Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) in Mumbai.

Born to lioness Bharati and lion Manas, the cubs are part of a carefully managed conservation breeding programme. Their arrival has drawn attention not just for its rarity, but for what it represents.

SGNP remains the only national park in India where people can see lions, tigers and leopards within a major metropolitan city.

But that claim comes with a complication.

Because while all three species are present here, they do not — and largely cannot — live together in the wild.

A park that holds what the wild keeps apart

Sanjay Gandhi National Park sits within Mumbai, a city of over 20 million people. Inside its boundaries are 13 tigers, five lions in captivity, and more than 50 leopards moving freely through forest edges that blur into residential neighbourhoods.

This proximity makes the park singular.

Nowhere else in India can citizens encounter all three apex predators in one landscape so close to dense urban life.

But do they really coexist?

Why lions and tigers don’t share a ‘home’

Lions and tigers, despite sharing the same country, are separated by ecology.

Asiatic lions are confined to Gujarat’s Gir landscape, where open forests and grasslands support their pride-based behaviour. Tigers,........

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