fauna at Kuno. Lion reintroduction at Kuno National Park Establishing the wildlife sanctuary The Madhya Pradesh state forest department notified of the Kuno Palpur area as a Wildlife Sanctuary in 1981. In April 2002, a separate Wildlife Division was established for Kuno, effectively increasing the protected area for wildlife to . Rehabilitation of villagers Twenty four villages of the Sahariya tribe, comprising 1545 families, were moved out from the core area and rehabilitated by the state government with assistance from the Central Government. Due to a paucity of suitable revenue lands in the vicinity of Kuno, the state government proposed relocating the villages on degraded protected forests, a move approved by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MOEF) of the Government of India, which granted its approval under Section 2 of the Forest (Conservation) Act 1980 for diversion of . By 2002-2003, all 24 villages and the identified families were relocated outside Kuno and the former village area converted into grasslands. The Madhya Pradesh state government informed the Supreme Court that each family was given of cultivable land, in addition to for housing along with building constructional material costing Rs 1,00,000/- per house. The net outflow to the Central Government was Rs.15 crores. Major gaps remain in the implementation of the rehabilitation measures, with villagers alleging that they have got little of the rehabilitation package they were promised. The negative economic impact of the displacement to villagers from Kuno sanctuary has raised a controversy over the merits of species preservation via dislocation of human populations living inside Protected Areas. NGOs, such as the Samrakshan Trust, have been working for better rehabilitation of villagers who agreed to move out of the Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary. Opposition by the Gujarat Government In 2004, the state government refused to part with the first pride of 19 animals planned for relocation. The state considers the lions as "heritage of the state" and the issue of handing over lions has become a political issue. Mangubhai Patel, then State Forest Minister, went on record to state that: As early as 2009, the continued opposition of the Gujarat state government led to the Madhya Pradesh Forest Department's exploration of the possibility of procuring zoo-bred Asiatic lions and shifting them and their descendants to Palpur-Kuno. The Gujarat state government has, over time, made various arguments against translocating lions to Madhya Pradesh (MP), such as that the Kuno sanctuary was