The range of the lion in North Africa and South-West Asia formerly stretched across the coastal forests of northern Africa and from northern Greece across south-west Asia to eastern India. Today the only living representatives of the lions once found throughout much of South-West Asia occur in India's Gir Forest (Nowell and Jackson 1996) but there are now also some groups outside Gir Forest - Girnar, coastal subpopulation, Bali Tana subpopulation.