Debate Erupts as Govt Restarts Jungle Safaris in Bandipur, Nagarahole
BENGALUR: While Forest and Environment Minister Eshwar Khandre on Saturday issued the order to resume banned jungle safaris in Bandipur and Nagarahole Tiger Reserve from November 7, wildlife activists and farmer leaders asked the Minister a question: “When night traffic has been successfully implemented in Bandipur and Nagarahole to reduce roadkill of wild animals, why cannot jungle safaris be banned around the two tiger reserves to save human lives?”
Bandipur Tiger Reserves are spread across Mysuru and Chamarajanagr and Nagarahole in Mysuru and Kodagu districts.
The minister banned jungle safaris after tigers emerged from the Bandipur Tiger Reserve and killed villagers, with one of them seriously injured in 2025. But now to reopen jungle safaris, the Minister stated that there is no scientific support to support claims that jungle safaris cause human-animal conflict by disturbing wild animals, especially tigers/leopards and elephants.
Questioning the minister’s reasoning, a wildlife activist told Deccan Chronicle on Saturday, before night traffic was banned, that there were 91 road kills in Bandipur from 2004 to 2008, including a tiger, an elephant and two leopards. But the road deaths on Bandipur roads – one connecting to Ooty in Tamil Nadu and the other to Wayanad in Kerala – took place after the night traffic ban came into effect.
According to data collected by the activist, 34 deaths of wild animals were recorded in the reserve, based on wild animals killed on roads from February 2009 to January 8, 2018, after the night traffic ban came into effect in the Bandipur Tiger Reserve.
Opposing the reopening of safaris, farmer leader Honnur Prakash said tiger attacks were less before 2025, but previously recorded cases of tiger attacks were more, leading to 3 human deaths and one serious attack. Prakash said farmers will continue to oppose the reopening of jungle safaris and a meeting has been called for Monday to determine the future course of action.
President and Chief Executive of the Wild Conservation Trust, which supports jungle safaris, Dr. Anish Andheria said: “Vehicle-based jungle safaris have been operating in most Indian tiger reserves for more than three decades, and there is no scientific evidence linking regulated, vehicle-based tourism to increasing human-tiger conflict.”
“As tiger populations grow, they disperse over large areas in search of territory, often moving through small forest patches and corridors until they find habitat with adequate prey, long-term water supplies and mating opportunities,” observed the CEO, himself a conservationist.
“Wildlife conflict is a consequence of the success of conservation efforts,” said wildlife conservationist Julian Matthews. He said the ongoing wildlife conflict was not an ecotourism issue but a management issue of the forest department.
