How a National Geographic photographer tracked India’s last lions

In our June 2026 issue, National Geographic reported on the lions found in the Gir Wildlife Sanctuary in Gujarat, India. This population of Asiatic lions was once near extinction, but as a result of the Indian government's financial commitment, community programs, and conservation work, 891 lions were counted in the latest 2025 census. National Geographic Explorer and photographer Steve Winter traveled to the park to photograph the lions featured in this story.

Here, we take you behind the scenes to look at how our photographer got the shot.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you first learn about this story, and what drove you to photograph the lions in Gir?

I’ve been photographing big cats for over two decades, and I’ve worked in India on leopards and tigers for a long time. In the back of my mind, I was always thinking about the lions in India. And so I decided; let's see whether we can do a story on this.

Very few people know that there are lions in India, that there is such a thing as Asiatic lions, which are cousins to the African lions we know so well. And there's one place where they still survive. That's in Gujarat, which is on the Arabian Sea in India.

We applied for a journalist visa before the COVID pandemic, and then everything was shut down for years and we had to restart the process. It took seven years to finally start doing the story.

Once you were on the ground, what were some of your biggest challenges?

Well, the biggest challenge with things like this, is that you have a lion reserve, but you can only use 10 to 20 percent of that reserve for tourism. And even though I had special permits, I wasn't allowed to go to the closed off areas. Every national park has a protected core area that's for the animals, and it’s the same in the Gir Wildlife Sanctuary, which is actually fantastic, it’s amazing for the animals. It helps give them the security that they need.

In those areas of the park, the cats are in front of you a lot of the time, but it's very difficult photographing something you haven't seen.

For this story you set up camera traps throughout the park, which automatically take photos when triggered. What was that experience like?

I’m used to doing this, but camera trapping is hard. That's why you have to work with trackers and scientists to find out where the animals go, where their pathways are, where they mark territory. But even so, cats are cats. They do what they want. 

My camera traps are a box with a camera receiver transmitter that's triggered when animals walk through an infrared beam. And then I usually have three lights set up and camouflaged. So if the flashes don't go off and it's dark, or the lights are in a bunch of cases, the monkeys will come through and have fun with them. On one of my camera traps, I had five to six flashes on it, so if they broke a couple, at least I had more than normal.

With camera trapping, you may not get what you want and it may be caused by some technical thing like a cord. The first trip, I do admit that I was at a loss of what the problems were. Nothing was working, and I have absolutely no idea why.

You go through every little thing, every connection, figure out why it's not working.

You test every piece of equipment and in the end we just quit using them. But when they're functioning properly, you may not be getting what you want. So you figure out how to make it so you do get it, and you have to be so happy because it's like getting a present that you didn't know you were going to get. It is going to be one of the best days of your life because all of a sudden you're going through images and go, wow, look what we've got. 

You worked with the park’s expert animal trackers. How did they help you photograph your subjects?

The park’s trackers always know where all these lions are because they have GPS tags that document where this pride is. So if we were looking for something specific, we could always find it. If I said, I'd like to go see the mom and one cub today, or the pride on the other side of the park—with what ended up being 10 to 13 cubs—they could say, oh, great, we will take you no problem.

It was very important to have these trackers with us, especially the boss, Sagar Manjariya, who was with us the entire time.

Sagar was such a help in showing us these areas. It was very, very important for us to have that opportunity because every day is difficult. 

He helped us find trails, the smaller the trail, the better. The lions walk on that trail, and that's what you want to see. You can have a side shot, or you get a face shot or their back end if they're going the other way.

You're always looking for behavior; you're looking for something new. Sagar was also the man that knew great camera trap locations, because a lot of these trackers spend a lot of their time on the ground. They ride bicycles or motorcycles, so they get off the main roads and go onto trails to find the location of these animals. This helps protect them if they're getting too close to a village and protects them from any possible intruders.

Did you have any dangerous run-ins with the parks lions?

We had some situations that were a bit scary because when you put camera traps up, you are on the ground. So we're right next to a small cement bridge. All the roads in the park are dirt, and it's incredibly dusty.

So, we're down there putting the camera trap up on some of the only water left right before the monsoon.  It's so hot. It's like 107°F  during the day. I mean, brutal and so dangerous.

And so we're sitting there. I'm not really sitting, I'm crouched down or laying on the ground trying to look through the camera. I put my cameras low so they're eye-to-eye with the cat that is drinking on the other side of this small water body. And all of a sudden somebody points, and I look up and the female is right there. And I mean, when you're talking about right there, she's like 10 feet above us. Oh my gosh. She can jump down without a problem at all. 

Instead, she goes to the backside, comes down, and then she's getting ready to walk through the culvert, which would be exactly in front of us. But guess what? Every lion knows Sagar the head tracker. And he just comes, looks at her in the eye, and she turns around and off she goes to find her two cubs.

What are the takeaways from the assignment and story that you hope will resonate with readers?

This is a conservation success story: At the turn of the 20th century, there were just a couple dozen Asiatic lions left in India’s Gujarat state—the last of their kind. Years of conservation, which now includes everything from high-tech monitoring and strong protection by park guards (including India’s largest female guard force) to community programs that give local people incentives to coexist with lions.

 There is a strong cultural and religious connection, and great pride in Gujarat that they’ve brought these cats back from the brink of extinction to almost 900 animals.   

The guard force is so effective that there has not been a recorded lion poaching there in more than two decades. And I don't think there's any other place on the planet that is home to big cats that has virtually stopped poaching. And that’s extraordinary.