Tribals of “Jungle Book” Reserve Are Not Being Forced Out: Govt

Efforts to save the tigers and give growth to tourism may be resulting in dislocation of tribals in ‘Mowgli’s forest’

Conservation efforts to save the tigers and facilitate tourism may be resulting in dislocation of tribes from sanctuaries and wildlife parks. (Photo: PTI)

A wildlife official in central India, on Wednesday, rejected claims that tribes living in a tiger sanctuary inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book were being forced from their ancestral land to protect the endangered animals.

Indigenous rights group Survival International says the Baiga tribes in the Achanakmar Wildlife Sanctuary in Chhattisgarh state are being harassed by forest guards to leave the land where they have lived for generations.

BN Dwivedi, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests and Chief Wildlife Warden in Chhattisgarh, said there were plans to relocate some tribal villages that are inside the sanctuary, but that no force was being used. He said that the tribals cannot be evacuated from the reserve without their permission.

The allegation that they are being relocated forcefully is not correct and entirely incorrect.

BN Dwivedi

Achanakmar covers an area of 552 sq km (213 sq miles) and is home to numerous flora and fauna, including endangered animals such as leopards, wild bison and the Bengal tiger.

It forms part of a tiger corridor to the neighbouring Kanha National Park, which provided the inspiration for “The Jungle Book”, Kipling’s novel about an abandoned boy who is raised by wolves in the jungle in India. A new cinematic adaptation of the book released in India, April of this year.

London-based Survival International said the Baiga people were told they will have to move from their villages to a muddy clearing outside the reserve, even though there is no evidence their presence in the reserve is harming tigers.

In fact, it said, the number of tigers in the reserve has reportedly risen to 28 in 2015, from 12 in 2011.

Survival International’s director Stephen Corry says that it is illegal and immoral to target tribes that have co-existed with the tiger for centuries, when the real reason for the tiger becoming endangered is industrialisation and mass-scale colonial era hunting.

Corry added,

Big conservation organisations should be partnering with tribal people, not propping up the forest departments that are guilty of brutalising them. Targeting tribal people harms conservation.

Despite a slew of “pro-poor” policies, activists say India’s economic boom has bypassed many tribal communities, who make up more than 8 percent of its population of 1.3 billion people.

Many live in forest villages, eking out a living by farming, rearing cattle, collecting and selling fruit and leaves.

Some environmentalists fear that The Forest Rights Act, 2008, a law recognising the right of indigenous tribes to inhabit forests where their forefathers had settled centuries earlier has hindered conservation efforts and encouraged poaching of animals such as tigers.

Dwivedi said there were plans to relocate 250 Baiga families from four villages, but all were happy to leave the reserve.

They (the tribals) want to come out from the area so that they get schooling, hospital as well as road facilities

(This article has been published in collaboration with Thomas Reuters.)