Adivasis demand halt to tiger safari push, evictions in south India forests

TOI correspondent from London: Save tiger. Sell forest. Scrap people. Stop. Adivasi communities from forests stretching across Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu have mounted a pushback against wildlife tourism and tiger reserve expansion, accusing forest authorities and conservation groups of turning ancestral homelands into a commercial safari “spectacle” while evicting indigenous families and forcing them to the fringes.

More than 35 Adivasi villages under Nagarahole Adivasi Jamma Paale Hakku Sthapana Samiti of Kodagu and Mysuru — roughly 220km southwest of Bengaluru in Karnataka’s forest belt — issued a joint “Nagarhole Declaration” Thursday demanding an immediate moratorium on all relocations from forests, saying none were voluntary.

Declaration followed a marathon community dialogue held from May 5 to 7 at Balekavu village inside Nagarahole forests, where Adivasi activists from Wayanad in northern Kerala, Muthanga wildlife region near Kerala-Karnataka border, Sathyamangalam tiger landscape in western Tamil Nadu, and Mudumalai reserve in Nilgiris gathered to forge a common front across Western Ghats tiger territory.

Their charge was blunt: forests once walked, hunted, worshipped and buried in by indigenous communities are being fenced off, branded and monetised through tiger safaris and conservation projects crafted without consent of forest dwellers.

Declaration accused forest departments and National Tiger Conservation Authority of usurping customary lands and turning them into a “commercial spectacle”. “What forest bureaucracy called core area or critical tiger habitat are our ancestral lands, our sacred spaces,” it said.

It said Forest Rights Act of 2006, enacted to reverse historical injustices against forest communities, has failed to protect them on ground. Instead, “injustice continues” through safari jeeps driving over lands where “our ancestors walked and are buried”, through conservation plans imposed on villages and through generations trapped in bonded labour on tea and coffee estates.

“It is unconscionable that in states like Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu that announce themselves as champions of social justice, thousands of Adivasi families remain trapped in conditions that can only be honestly described as servitude,” declaration said.

Document painted conservation battle in stark historical terms, arguing violence unleashed under colonial forest laws never truly ended after Independence but merely “put on a green uniform under mask of conservation”.

Adivasis alleged notifications declaring national parks and tiger reserves were pushed through without following legal procedures. They demanded ancestral territories be recognised as “scheduled areas” under Constitution, giving tribal communities stronger self-governance rights.

Declaration claimed forest and tourism departments in three states have “no lawful authority” to operate, licence or commercialise wildlife safaris on customary Adivasi lands without informed consent from Gram Sabhas. It sought immediate suspension of all safari operations until such consent is secured.

Sharpest words were aimed at wildlife NGOs backing fortress-style conservation models. “Conservation that requires eviction of us, indigenous people of lands, is not conservation. It is colonisation,” declaration said.

Activists said battle over forests is no longer merely about wildlife protection. It is about whether ancient indigenous footprints will survive beneath tyre tracks of booming safari tourism. “We are first people of this land. We are not trespassers,” said JK Thimma, a Jenu Kuruba activist. “There is no conflict between us and animals in forest.”

Declaration said rights guaranteed under Forest Rights Act — which recognises forest dwellers as custodians of forest resources — have allegedly been ignored, leaving many Adivasi communities “constitutionally invisible”.