Proving yet again that tribal people are the best conservationists and guardians of wildlife, the tiger population has doubled in the BRT Tiger Reserve in Karnataka, the only sanctuary in India where they are allowed to live alongside the big cats even in the core area.
Survival International, the global movement for tribal people’s rights, on Friday reported that the tiger population has increased rapidly, almost doubled from 35 to 68 between 2010 and 2014 in the reserve, where local Soliga tribe has won its right to stay. This increase is far higher than the national rate at which the tiger population is growing.
The new data and the related information, which the Indian National Tiger Conservation Authority allegedly tried to suppress, discredits government policy to remove the many tribes whose lands have been turned into tiger reserves, the global organisation asserts.
The Soligas have a highly developed relationship with their natural environment, and venerate the tiger. Madegowda, a Soliga man, said, “We worship tigers as gods. There hasn’t been a single incident of conflict between Soligas and tigers or hunting here.”
Across India, tribal communities are being evicted from their ancestral lands in the name of tiger conservation. In 2014, hundreds of Baiga tribal people were evicted from Kanha Tiger Reserve — home of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Jungle Book’ — while over a hundred thousand tourists are welcomed into the reserve every year.
Buoyed by the increased tiger population in BRT, Survival International has called for a new conservation model that respects tribal peoples’ rights and uses their expertise to protect and enhance ecological diversity.
Survival’s director Stephen Corry said, “These figures expose government policy to remove tribal people from reserves as not only immoral but also counterproductive. Tigers tend to do well when tribal communities remain — they have, after all, lived together for generations. But unlike tribal people, the thousands of tourists who drive in every day bring in a huge amount of money to the conservation industry. They also, of course, get the tigers used to close human presence — something poachers find useful.”
The best way to save the tiger is to leave the tribal people who have protected their forests alone. Survival will continue to fight and expose the forced evictions that the conservation industry has tried hard to keep hidden, he added.
Though Soligas have been living with and protecting the wildlife in their forests for countless generations, many forestry officials still believe that forest and tiger conservation requires the removal of all people from the forests. These prejudices often make foresters unwilling to respect tribal rights — especially the right to make a livelihood from the forest. Fortunately for Soligas, a local court has upheld their right even though they lie inside the tiger reserve. The court victory exposes this injustice and the necessity for the rights of India’s tribes to be respected, asserts the global organisation which has been helping tribal people defend their lives, protect their lands and determine their own future.
