{"id":13885,"date":"2026-05-29T00:47:35","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T19:17:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/adivasis-demand-halt-to-tiger-safari-push-evictions-in-south-india-forests-india-news\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T00:47:35","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T19:17:35","slug":"adivasis-demand-halt-to-tiger-safari-push-evictions-in-south-india-forests-india-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/adivasis-demand-halt-to-tiger-safari-push-evictions-in-south-india-forests-india-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Adivasis demand halt to tiger safari push, evictions in south India forests | India News"},"content":{"rendered":"


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TOI correspondent from London:<\/span> Save tiger. Sell forest. Scrap people. Stop. Adivasi communities from forests stretching across Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu<\/a> 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 \u201cspectacle\u201d 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 \u2014 roughly 220km southwest of Bengaluru in Karnataka\u2019s forest belt \u2014 issued a joint \u201cNagarhole Declaration\u201d 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 \u201ccommercial spectacle\u201d. \u201cWhat forest bureaucracy called core area or critical tiger habitat are our ancestral lands, our sacred spaces,\u201d 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, \u201cinjustice continues\u201d through safari jeeps driving over lands where \u201cour ancestors walked and are buried\u201d, through conservation plans imposed on villages and through generations trapped in bonded labour on tea and coffee estates.\u201cIt 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,\u201d declaration said.Document painted conservation battle in stark historical terms, arguing violence unleashed under colonial forest laws never truly ended after Independence but merely \u201cput on a green uniform under mask of conservation\u201d.Adivasis alleged notifications declaring national parks and tiger reserves were pushed through without following legal procedures. They demanded ancestral territories be recognised as \u201cscheduled areas\u201d under Constitution, giving tribal communities stronger self-governance rights.Declaration claimed forest and tourism departments in three states have \u201cno lawful authority\u201d 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. \u201cConservation that requires eviction of us, indigenous people of lands, is not conservation. It is colonisation,\u201d 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. \u201cWe are first people of this land. We are not trespassers,\u201d said JK Thimma, a Jenu Kuruba activist. \u201cThere is no conflict between us and animals in forest.\u201dDeclaration said rights guaranteed under Forest Rights Act \u2014 which recognises forest dwellers as custodians of forest resources \u2014 have allegedly been ignored, leaving many Adivasi communities \u201cconstitutionally invisible\u201d.<\/div>\n


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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 \u201cspectacle\u201d while evicting indigenous families and forcing them […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13886,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-country"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}