In India, where tigers are neighbours

This feel-good start to a May 11 news story by The Hans India gets bet­ter; Chen­chu mem­bers will teach vis­it­ors to Nal­lamala Jungle Camp all about moun­tain climb­ing and the forest environment.

Nal­lamala Jungle Camp is described as com­pris­ing “four semi-per­man­ent cot­tages, six semi-per­man­ent ten­ted accom­mod­a­tion cot­tages, recep­tion, a yoga centre, a lib­rary and dorm­it­ory” and also a “facil­ity for show­ing wild anim­als to the tourists”.

Krish­namurthy also announced at the inaug­ur­a­tion that the Chen­chu com­munity would receive per­man­ent hous­ing, loans, and “high­ways”. And he praised Andhra Pra­desh state for provid­ing the Chen­chu with “edu­ca­tion, rations, and med­ic­al care”.

How­ever, it is then repor­ted that the Chen­chu appealed to Krish­namurthy for bet­ter remu­ner­a­tion of “pro­tec­tion watch­ers”; “deman­ded” to be offered the jobs gen­er­ated by Nal­lamala Jungle Camp; and “com­plained” that they aren’t bene­fit­ing from the schemes being imple­men­ted by the “Integ­rated Tri­bal Devel­op­ment Author­ity”. (Integ­rated Tri­bal Devel­op­ment Projects/Agencies are described, unclearly, here.)

Full story at The Hans India.

There had to be a lot more to this story. And there is.

It turns out the star anim­al attrac­tion of Nal­lamala is the tiger, which roams the 3,728-sq. km Nagar­jun­as­agar Srisail­am Tiger Reserve (NSTR), India’s largest tiger reserve.

And it turns out the Chen­chu “pro­tec­tion watch­ers” watch tigers; they pro­tect tigers from poaching.

Des­pite this, accord­ing to The Hindu in a May 6 fea­ture story, the Chen­chu may no longer have any right to call the Nal­lamala forest home after a Nation­al Tiger Con­ser­va­tion Author­ity (NCTA) order of March 28 “stripped them of their rights” to “for­ti­fy” the NSTR.

With tigers as neighbours who needs wolves at the door?

The order of March 28 reads: “in the absence of guidelines for noti­fic­a­tion of crit­ic­al wild­life hab­it­ats, no rights shall be con­ferred in Crit­ic­al Tiger Hab­it­ats (CTH) which is noti­fied under sec­tion 38 V (4) (i), of the Wild Life (Pro­tec­tion) Act, 1972.”

The Hindu inter­prets this to mean that the Chen­chu people may no longer have any right to claim Nal­lamala as their home.

“It also means liv­ing in a red zone of man-anim­al con­flict with an invi­ol­ate space for the tiger and vir­tu­ally no place for Chen­chus who iron­ic­ally are coun­ted among the old­est abori­gin­als of south India and have lived in the Nal­lamala hill range for hun­dreds of years,” the news­pa­per continues.

Dasari Bay­anna, a Chen­chu tribes­man, said: “We have lived in the forests for gen­er­a­tions. Show us one example of a Chen­chu killing a tiger. In fact, we pro­tect them from poach­ers. Nor were there many cases of tigers attack­ing us. Our paths cross but we respect each oth­er. We share the resources.

“But the Forest Depart­ment treats us as enemies of the tiger and wild­life and not as pro­tect­ors. They want to relo­cate us in faraway plains where we will be like fish out of water. Neither do we have the skills to cope in the plains nor can we return to the forest. We will simply wilt away.”

NSTR Field Dir­ect­or S Sravanan denied coer­cion: “It may just be their fears. We are not for­cing any Chen­chu even out of the core area. There is a pro­cess and a mon­et­ary pack­age for relo­ca­tion and we give options to them. And it is purely vol­un­tary and only after all Chen­chus in a par­tic­u­lar gudem (vil­lage) have giv­en their consent.”

Sravanan added: “There is no con­flict between tiger pro­tec­tion and Chen­chus in NSTR. Chen­chus live in coex­ist­ence here and in fact we deploy 200 Chen­chus as tiger pro­tec­tion watch­ers all round the year and 200 more as forest fire watch­ers for six months.”

Full story at The Hindu.

“It’s a con, and it’ll harm the environment”

Sur­viv­al Inter­na­tion­al is a “glob­al move­ment for tri­bal peoples’ rights”.

In a Feb­ru­ary 2017 Sur­viv­al Inter­na­tion­al report on the “bru­tal evic­tion” of the Baiga people from Rajak vil­lage in Achana­kmar tiger reserve, Survival’s Dir­ect­or Steph­en Corry said: “India’s forests are still being des­troyed by indus­tri­al “devel­op­ment” and tigers are still being poached.

“But forest offi­cials choose to bully tri­bal people and throw them off their land. It’s a con, and it’ll harm the environment.

“It’s time the big con­ser­va­tion organ­isa­tions con­demned these fake “vol­un­tary” relo­ca­tions and admit­ted what they really are, illeg­al evic­tions that lead dir­ectly to the destruc­tion of entire peoples.”

“The dev­ast­at­ing decline in Indi­an tiger num­bers was mostly caused by colo­ni­al and elite hunt­ing rather than by tri­bal peoples — who have lived along­side tigers for mil­len­nia.” — Sur­viv­al International

So where does the truth lie? Some­where in the middle?

What should a pro­spect­ive tour­ism sup­ply chain part­ner of a pro­ject like Nal­lamala Jungle Camp do, if anything?

If you have some ideas, please share them here.