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Wildlife conference: Tribes demand: ‘recognize our right to hunt!’ Updated for 2026

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Tomorrow the follow up to last year’s London Conference on the Illegal Trade in Wildlife kicks off in Kasane, Botswana.

The original meeting in February 2014 famously featured the British princes Charles and William giving the event international prestige and celebrity pulling power – and drew together heads of government to discuss the rise in the illicit trade in wildlife.

Now the ‘United for Wildlife‘ Kasane meeting will review the status of implementation of the actions agreed as part of the ‘London Declaration‘.

But according to the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency, “Governments have been talking about adopting more sophisticated enforcement responses for many years but have failed to invest adequately in more proactive measures.”

EIA is also calling on governments to improve legislation to ensure illegal wildlife trade is treated as serious crime with meaningful penalties as a deterrent, and to enable the confiscation of proceeds of crime.

And it ia seeking firm promises from countries to permanently “end all trade in ivory, rhino horn and tiger parts, including farmed tiger parts.” Last month China, the world’s main ivory importer – announced a ban on ivory imports, but only for a single year, sending a weak signal to ivory dealers and carvers.

Indigenous peoples treated as criminals

But despite the uninspiring record on combatting wildlife crime to date, draconian laws and zealous enforcement are the rule when it comes to indigenous peoples hunting for their own subsistence – even though this is completely outside the scope of the London Declaration.

Indigenous organizations from Brazil, Cameroon, Kenya and many other countries, over 80 experts on hunter-gatherers, and thousands of people from around the world are now calling on on delegates in Kasane to recognize tribal peoples’ right to hunt for their survival.

Thousands of people and organizations are backing a letter to delegates from Survival International, which campaigns for tribal peoples’ rights, which states:

“We are asking you to stress to participants that there is a difference between peoples hunting sustainably for subsistence, and illegal poaching which endangers wildlife. Our efforts to press the organizations in United For Wildlife to make public declarations acknowledging this have met with little success.”

And the Kisane conference’s host country, Botswana, is one of the worst when it comes to indigenous peoples’ rights including their right to traditional subsistence on their own lands.

Despite winning a major legal victory which confirmed their right to hunt inside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, Bushmen in Botswana are routinely arrested and beaten when found hunting.

Trampling indigenous rights underfoot

Botswana is also moving ahead with a massive diamond mine on Bushman land in the Kalahari, and has parcelled out vast tracts of indigenous land into concessions for fracking – giving the lie to President Ian Khama concern for wildlife.

“A ban incorporating subsistence or tribal hunting, such as President Khama has declared in Botswana, is a gross violation of human rights”, Survival’s letter continues. “It is in violation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the ILO Convention 169 and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

“It is also in violation of Botswana’s High Court ruling from 2006, as well as the country’s Constitution. It will destroy the last hunting Bushmen in Africa – as we believe is partly its intention.”

And the letter concludes by pointing an accusing finger at both Botwana and other conference participants: “Several conservation organizations in United For Wildlife have played a role in the illegal eviction of tribal peoples from their lands, as has the government of Botswana.

“For the Botswana conference to be calling for ‘law enforcement’ about poaching while being complicit in gross human rights violations, does no service to conservation.”

Khama, who is set to open the Kisane conference, presents himself as a great conservationist, and in 2010 received a personal visit in Botswana from Princes William and Harry in support of the Tusk Trust, which supports a number of African conservation projects. He is also a board member of the huge US-based NGO Conservation International.

True conservationists must stand up for indigenous rights

Things are no better in Cameroon where Baka and Bayaka ‘Pygmies’ in the Republic of Congo have been beaten and tortured by anti-poaching squads, and fear going into the forest to hunt. 

India has also been illegally evicting tribal peoples from tiger reserves and other forest lands, often leaving them in landless and in poverty at the roadside unable to feed themselves. As many as 200,000 people may have been evicted for ‘conservation’ in the last few decades.

During a symposium co-organized by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) (a sponsor of the Kisane conference) wildlife crime in February, human rights lawyer Gordon Bennett issued a damning legal analysis of the negative impacts of wildlife law enforcement on tribal peoples.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, “It’s utterly irresponsible for conservationists and politicians to call for tougher law enforcement against ‘poaching’ without clearly acknowledging that tribal subsistence hunters are not, in fact, ‘poachers.’

“It’s not a matter of semantics – tribal hunters are being systematically arrested, beaten and tortured for ‘poaching,’ and it is happening because conservationists are not standing up for tribal peoples’ rights.

“If delegates at the Kasane conference cared even the slightest about the lives of the indigenous communities their policies affect most, they would acknowledge that tribal people should not be treated as criminals when they hunt to feed their families.”

 

 

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

 




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Ethiopia: stealing the Omo Valley, destroying its ancient Peoples Updated for 2026

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There is growing international concern for the future of the lower Omo Valley in Ethiopia. A beautiful, biologically diverse land with volcanic outcrops and a pristine riverine forest; it is also a UNESCO world heritage site, yielding significant archaeological finds, including human remains dating back 2.4 million years.

The Valley is one of the most culturally diverse places in the world, with around200,000 indigenous people living there. Yet, in blind attempts to modernise and develop what the government sees as an area of ‘backward’ farmers in need of modernisation, some of Ethiopia’s most valuable landscapes, resources and communities are being destroyed.

A new dam, called Gibe III, on the Omo River is nearing completion and will begin operation in June, 2015, potentially devastating the lives of half a million people. Along with the dam, extensive land grabbing is forcing thousands from their ancestral homes and destroying ecosystems.

Ethiopia’s ‘villagisation’ programme is aiding the land-grab by pushing tribes into purpose built villages where they can no longer access their lands, becoming unable to sustain themselves, and making these previously self-sufficient tribes dependent on government food aid.

A total disregard for the rights of Ethiopia’s Indigenous Peoples

What is happening in the lower Omo Valley, and elsewhere, shows a complete disregard for human rights and a total failure to understand the value these tribes offer Ethiopia in terms of their cultural heritage and their contribution to food security.

There are eight tribes living in the Valley, including the Mursi, famous for wearing large plates in their lower lips. Their agricultural practices have been developed over generations to cope with Ethiopia’s famously dry climate.

Many are herders who keep cattle, sheep and goats and live nomadically. Others practice small-scale shifting cultivation, whilst many depend on the fertile crop and pasture land created by seasonal flooding.

The vital life source of the Omo River is being cut off by Gibe III. An Italian construction company began work in 2006, violating Ethiopian law as there was no competitive bidding for the contract and no meaningful consultation with indigenous people.

The dam has received investment from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and the World Bank, and the hydropower is primarily going for export rather than domestic use – despite the fact that 77% of Ethiopia’s population lacks access to electricity.

People in the Omo Valley are politically vulnerable and geographically remote. Many do not speak Amharic, the national language, and have no access to resources or information. Foreign journalists have been denied contact with the tribes, as BBC reporter Matthew Newsome recently discovered when he was prevented from speaking to the Mursi people.

There has been little consideration of potential impacts, including those which may affect other countries, particularly Kenya, as Lake Turkana relies heavily on the Omo River.

At risk: Lake Turkana, ‘Cradle of Mankind’

Lake Turkana, known as the ‘Cradle of Mankind’, is the world’s largest desert lake dating back more than 4 million years. 90% of its inflow comes from the Omo. Filling of the lake behind the dam will take three years and use up to a years’ worth of inflow that would otherwise go into Lake Turkana.

Irrigation projects linked with the dam will then reduce the inflow by 50% and lead to a drop of up to 20 metres in the lake’s depth. These projects may also pollute the water with chemicals and nitrogen run-off. Dr Sean Avery’s report explains how this could devastate the lake’s ancient ecosystems and affect the 300,000 people who depend on it for their livelihoods.

Tribal communities living around the lake rely on it for fish, as well as an emergency source of water. It also attracts other wildlife which some tribes hunt for food, such as the El Molo, who hunt hippo and crocodile. Turkana is home to at least 60 fish species, which have evolved to be perfectly adapted to the lake’s environment.

Breeding activity is highest when the Omo floods, and this seasonal flood also stimulates the migration of spawning fish. Flooding is vital for diluting the salinity of the lake, making it habitable. Livestock around the lake add nutrients to the soil encouraging shoreline vegetation, and this is important for protecting young fish during the floods.

Lake Turkana is a fragile ecosystem, highly dependent on regular seasonal activity, particularly from the Omo. To alter this ancient ebb and flow will throw the environment out of balance and impact all life which relies on the lake.

Severely restricted resources around the lake may also lead to violence amongst those competing for what’s left. Low water levels could see the lake split in two, similar to the Aral Sea. Having acted as a natural boundary between people, there is concern that conflict will be inevitable.

Fear is already spreading amongst the tribes who say they are afraid of those who live on the other side of the lake. One woman said, “They will come and kill us and that will bring about enmity among us as we turn on each other due to hunger.”

Conflict may also come from Ethiopians moving into Kenyan territory in attempts to find new land and resources.

A land grab twice the size of France

The dam is part of a wider attempt to develop the Omo Valley resulting in land grabs and plantations depending on large-scale irrigation. Since 2008 an area the size of France has been given to foreign companies, and there are plans to hand over twice this area of land over the next few years.

Investors can grow what they want and sell where they want. The main crops being brought into cultivation include, sugar, cotton, maize, palm oil and biofuels. These have no benefit to local economies, and rather than using Ethiopia’s fragile fertile lands to support its own people, the crops grown here are exported for foreign markets.

Despite claims that plantations will bring jobs, most of the workers are migrants. Where local people (including children) are employed, they are paid extremely poorly. 750km of internal roads are also being constructed to serve the plantations, and are carving up the landscape, causing further evictions.

In order to prepare the land for plantations, all trees and grassland are cleared, destroying valuable ecosystems and natural resources.

Reports claim the military have been regularly intimidating villages, stealing and killing cattle and destroying grain stores. There have also been reports of beatings, rape and even deaths, whilst those who oppose the developments are put in jail. The Bodi, Kwegi and Mursi people were evicted to make way for the Kuraz Sugar Project which covers 245,000 acres.

The Suri have also been forcibly removed to make way for the Koka palm oil plantation, run by a Malaysian company and covering 76,600 acres. This is also happening elsewhere in Ethiopia, particularly the Gambela region where 73% of the indigenous population are destined for resettlement.

Al-Moudi, a Saudi tycoon, has 10,000 acres in this region to grow rice, which is exported to the Middle East. A recent report from the World Bank’s internal watchdog has accused a UK and World Bank funded development programme of contributing to this violent resettlement.

For many tribes in the Omo Valley, the loss of their land means the loss of their culture. Cattle herding is not just a source of income, it defines people’s lives. There is great cultural value placed on the animals. The Bodi are known to sing poems to their favourite cattle; and there are many rituals involving the livestock, such as the Hamer tribe’s coming of age ceremony whereby young men must jump across a line of 10 to 30 bulls.

Losing their land also means losing the ability to sustain themselves. As Ulijarholi, a member of the Mursi tribe, said, “If our land is taken, it is like taking our lives.”

They will no longer be independent but must rely on government food aid or try to grow food from tiny areas of land with severely reduced resources.

Ethiopia’s food security

Ethiopia is currently experiencing economic growth, yet 30 million people still face chronic food shortages. Some 90% of Ethiopia’s national budget is foreign aid, but instead of taking a grass-roots approach to securing a self-sufficient food supply for its people, it is being pushed aggressively towards industrial development and intensive production for foreign markets.

There is a failure to recognise what these indigenous small-scale farmers and pastoralists offer to Ethiopia’s food security. Survival of the Fittest, a report by Oxfam, argued that pastoralism is one of the best ways to combat climate change because of its flexibility.

During droughts animals can be slaughtered and resources focused on a core breeding stock in order to survive. This provides insurance against crop failure as livestock can be exchanged for grain or sold, but when crops fail there can be nothing left. Tribal people can also live off the meat and milk of their animals.

Those who have long cultivated the land in the Omo Valley are essential to the region’s food security, producing sorghum, maize and beans on the flood plains. This requires long experience of the local climate and the river’s seasonal behaviour, as well as knowledge of which crops grow well under diverse and challenging conditions.

Support for smallholders and pastoralists could improve their efficiency and access to local markets. This would be a sustainable system which preserved soil fertility and the local ecosystem through small-scale mixed rotation cropping, appropriate use of scarce resources (by growing crops which don’t need lots of water, for example) and use of livestock for fertility-building, as well as for producing food on less productive lands.

Instead, over a billion dollars is being spent on hydro-electric power and irrigation projects. This will ultimately prove unsustainable, since large-scale crop irrigation in dry regions causes water depletion and salinisation of the soil, turning the land unproductive within a couple of generations.

Short of an international outcry however, the traditional agricultural practices of the indigenous people will be long gone by the time the disastrous consequences becomes apparent.

 

 

Megan Perry is Personal and Research Assistant to SFT Policy Director, Richard Young.

This article was originally published byt the Sustainable Food Trust.

Also on The Ecologist:

 




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India: ‘Jungle Book’ tribes illegally evicted from tiger reserve Updated for 2026

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Tribal people have been forcibly evicted from India’s Kanha Tiger Reserve – home of Rudyard Kipling’s classic tale The Jungle Book – in the name of tiger conservation, according to Survival International.

Evicted tribespeople report that the Forest Department threatened to release elephants to trample their houses and crops if they did not leave immediately.

The area is the ancestral home of the Baiga and Gond tribes, who face a desperate future without their forests. Across India, many more face a similar threat.

The families were harassed for years to leave the reserve. When they were finally evicted, they received no land or help in establishing their lives outside. Months after their eviction, families report that they have received only a fraction of the compensation they were expecting – others have received nothing.

“We got some money, but we are lost – wandering in search of land”, said a tribesperson evicted from Jholar village in Kanha. “Here there is only sadness. We need the jungle.”

All in violation of Indian law

The communities have now been scattered among the surrounding villages. One Baiga man told Survival before the eviction: “They want to give us money. We don’t want money. We want land. Money doesn’t mean anything to us. It comes and it goes.”

In a similar eviction in December 2013, 32 Khadia families were moved out of Similipal Tiger Reserve in Odisha state and were living in dire conditions under plastic sheets. They have not received the compensation they were promised.

In a letter to India’s Tiger Conservation Authority, Survival reports: “Since their eviction, families report having had to ‘scatter’ to different villages; receiving abuse, including racial abuse, from residents of the villages where they are trying to settle; being tricked and cheated by middle men and land agents; and feeling lost, frightened and without means of livelihood or hope for their future.”

It also accuses the Tiger Authority of gross infringements of the tribal peoples legal rights to stay in, live from, and protect their forests as enshrined in both Indian and international law.

As Survival points out in a letter to the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), which has been providing infrastructural support, training and equipment for frontline Forest Department staff:

“The evictions are also illegal under both the Wildlife (Protection) Act Amendment (2006) and the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006 (FRA) because the gram sabhas (village councils) of these villages did not give their free, prior, informed consent and people left under duress.

“A vital prerequisite to relocation under both acts is that villagers’ forest rights should be recognised, but this process had hardly begun in these villages, and many people did not even know about the FRA.”

None of the required conditions were fulfilled in Kanha.

The ugly side of conservation

“What’s happening in Kanha epitomizes the ugly side of the conservation industry”, said Survival’s Director Stephen Corry. “Thousands of tourists career through the park in noisy jeeps, clamoring to take photos of the beleaguered tigers. Meanwhile, Baiga communities that have carefully managed the tiger’s habitat over generations are annihilated by forced evictions.

“The irony appears to be lost on the conservationists. If India doesn’t allow the Baiga and Gond to return and prevent further villagers being kicked out, these communities will be completely destroyed. Evicting tribes won’t save the tiger. Tribal peoples are the best conservationists.”

In response to similar heavy-handed and misguided indigenous evictions around the world, Survival has launched its ‘Parks Need Peoples‘ campaign, which challenges the current model of conservation.

The core demands are that conservation programs must stick to international law, protect tribal peoples’ rights to their lands, ask them what help they need in protecting their lands, listen to them, and then be prepared to back them up as much as they can.

What next?

Survival is now awaiting from WWF answers to a number of questions, including what steps WWF-India has taken to oppose forced relocations and “ensure that WWF-India is not complicit in this gross abuse of the rights of the families evicted from Kanha”.

It also wishes to know whether WWF’s activities in the area are consistent with its own promises on indigenous peoples, and ILO Convention 169 and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

It has also asked the Tiger Authority to “act with great haste to investigate these illegal evictions, bring to justice those members of the relevant Forest Departments who are responsible for these illegalities and ensure that those who wish to return to their homes in Kanha are assisted to do so.

“We also call on you to enact a moratorium on any further relocations from tiger reserves unless and until it can be assured that all the conditions in the Act will be met in all cases.”

 

 

Source: Survival International.

 

 

 




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India: ‘Jungle Book’ tribes illegally evicted from tiger reserve Updated for 2026

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Tribal people have been forcibly evicted from India’s Kanha Tiger Reserve – home of Rudyard Kipling’s classic tale The Jungle Book – in the name of tiger conservation, according to Survival International.

Evicted tribespeople report that the Forest Department threatened to release elephants to trample their houses and crops if they did not leave immediately.

The area is the ancestral home of the Baiga and Gond tribes, who face a desperate future without their forests. Across India, many more face a similar threat.

The families were harassed for years to leave the reserve. When they were finally evicted, they received no land or help in establishing their lives outside. Months after their eviction, families report that they have received only a fraction of the compensation they were expecting – others have received nothing.

“We got some money, but we are lost – wandering in search of land”, said a tribesperson evicted from Jholar village in Kanha. “Here there is only sadness. We need the jungle.”

All in violation of Indian law

The communities have now been scattered among the surrounding villages. One Baiga man told Survival before the eviction: “They want to give us money. We don’t want money. We want land. Money doesn’t mean anything to us. It comes and it goes.”

In a similar eviction in December 2013, 32 Khadia families were moved out of Similipal Tiger Reserve in Odisha state and were living in dire conditions under plastic sheets. They have not received the compensation they were promised.

In a letter to India’s Tiger Conservation Authority, Survival reports: “Since their eviction, families report having had to ‘scatter’ to different villages; receiving abuse, including racial abuse, from residents of the villages where they are trying to settle; being tricked and cheated by middle men and land agents; and feeling lost, frightened and without means of livelihood or hope for their future.”

It also accuses the Tiger Authority of gross infringements of the tribal peoples legal rights to stay in, live from, and protect their forests as enshrined in both Indian and international law.

As Survival points out in a letter to the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), which has been providing infrastructural support, training and equipment for frontline Forest Department staff:

“The evictions are also illegal under both the Wildlife (Protection) Act Amendment (2006) and the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006 (FRA) because the gram sabhas (village councils) of these villages did not give their free, prior, informed consent and people left under duress.

“A vital prerequisite to relocation under both acts is that villagers’ forest rights should be recognised, but this process had hardly begun in these villages, and many people did not even know about the FRA.”

None of the required conditions were fulfilled in Kanha.

The ugly side of conservation

“What’s happening in Kanha epitomizes the ugly side of the conservation industry”, said Survival’s Director Stephen Corry. “Thousands of tourists career through the park in noisy jeeps, clamoring to take photos of the beleaguered tigers. Meanwhile, Baiga communities that have carefully managed the tiger’s habitat over generations are annihilated by forced evictions.

“The irony appears to be lost on the conservationists. If India doesn’t allow the Baiga and Gond to return and prevent further villagers being kicked out, these communities will be completely destroyed. Evicting tribes won’t save the tiger. Tribal peoples are the best conservationists.”

In response to similar heavy-handed and misguided indigenous evictions around the world, Survival has launched its ‘Parks Need Peoples‘ campaign, which challenges the current model of conservation.

The core demands are that conservation programs must stick to international law, protect tribal peoples’ rights to their lands, ask them what help they need in protecting their lands, listen to them, and then be prepared to back them up as much as they can.

What next?

Survival is now awaiting from WWF answers to a number of questions, including what steps WWF-India has taken to oppose forced relocations and “ensure that WWF-India is not complicit in this gross abuse of the rights of the families evicted from Kanha”.

It also wishes to know whether WWF’s activities in the area are consistent with its own promises on indigenous peoples, and ILO Convention 169 and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

It has also asked the Tiger Authority to “act with great haste to investigate these illegal evictions, bring to justice those members of the relevant Forest Departments who are responsible for these illegalities and ensure that those who wish to return to their homes in Kanha are assisted to do so.

“We also call on you to enact a moratorium on any further relocations from tiger reserves unless and until it can be assured that all the conditions in the Act will be met in all cases.”

 

 

Source: Survival International.

 

 

 




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India: ‘Jungle Book’ tribes illegally evicted from tiger reserve Updated for 2026

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Tribal people have been forcibly evicted from India’s Kanha Tiger Reserve – home of Rudyard Kipling’s classic tale The Jungle Book – in the name of tiger conservation, according to Survival International.

Evicted tribespeople report that the Forest Department threatened to release elephants to trample their houses and crops if they did not leave immediately.

The area is the ancestral home of the Baiga and Gond tribes, who face a desperate future without their forests. Across India, many more face a similar threat.

The families were harassed for years to leave the reserve. When they were finally evicted, they received no land or help in establishing their lives outside. Months after their eviction, families report that they have received only a fraction of the compensation they were expecting – others have received nothing.

“We got some money, but we are lost – wandering in search of land”, said a tribesperson evicted from Jholar village in Kanha. “Here there is only sadness. We need the jungle.”

All in violation of Indian law

The communities have now been scattered among the surrounding villages. One Baiga man told Survival before the eviction: “They want to give us money. We don’t want money. We want land. Money doesn’t mean anything to us. It comes and it goes.”

In a similar eviction in December 2013, 32 Khadia families were moved out of Similipal Tiger Reserve in Odisha state and were living in dire conditions under plastic sheets. They have not received the compensation they were promised.

In a letter to India’s Tiger Conservation Authority, Survival reports: “Since their eviction, families report having had to ‘scatter’ to different villages; receiving abuse, including racial abuse, from residents of the villages where they are trying to settle; being tricked and cheated by middle men and land agents; and feeling lost, frightened and without means of livelihood or hope for their future.”

It also accuses the Tiger Authority of gross infringements of the tribal peoples legal rights to stay in, live from, and protect their forests as enshrined in both Indian and international law.

As Survival points out in a letter to the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), which has been providing infrastructural support, training and equipment for frontline Forest Department staff:

“The evictions are also illegal under both the Wildlife (Protection) Act Amendment (2006) and the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006 (FRA) because the gram sabhas (village councils) of these villages did not give their free, prior, informed consent and people left under duress.

“A vital prerequisite to relocation under both acts is that villagers’ forest rights should be recognised, but this process had hardly begun in these villages, and many people did not even know about the FRA.”

None of the required conditions were fulfilled in Kanha.

The ugly side of conservation

“What’s happening in Kanha epitomizes the ugly side of the conservation industry”, said Survival’s Director Stephen Corry. “Thousands of tourists career through the park in noisy jeeps, clamoring to take photos of the beleaguered tigers. Meanwhile, Baiga communities that have carefully managed the tiger’s habitat over generations are annihilated by forced evictions.

“The irony appears to be lost on the conservationists. If India doesn’t allow the Baiga and Gond to return and prevent further villagers being kicked out, these communities will be completely destroyed. Evicting tribes won’t save the tiger. Tribal peoples are the best conservationists.”

In response to similar heavy-handed and misguided indigenous evictions around the world, Survival has launched its ‘Parks Need Peoples‘ campaign, which challenges the current model of conservation.

The core demands are that conservation programs must stick to international law, protect tribal peoples’ rights to their lands, ask them what help they need in protecting their lands, listen to them, and then be prepared to back them up as much as they can.

What next?

Survival is now awaiting from WWF answers to a number of questions, including what steps WWF-India has taken to oppose forced relocations and “ensure that WWF-India is not complicit in this gross abuse of the rights of the families evicted from Kanha”.

It also wishes to know whether WWF’s activities in the area are consistent with its own promises on indigenous peoples, and ILO Convention 169 and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

It has also asked the Tiger Authority to “act with great haste to investigate these illegal evictions, bring to justice those members of the relevant Forest Departments who are responsible for these illegalities and ensure that those who wish to return to their homes in Kanha are assisted to do so.

“We also call on you to enact a moratorium on any further relocations from tiger reserves unless and until it can be assured that all the conditions in the Act will be met in all cases.”

 

 

Source: Survival International.

 

 

 




389029

India: ‘Jungle Book’ tribes illegally evicted from tiger reserve Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




Tribal people have been forcibly evicted from India’s Kanha Tiger Reserve – home of Rudyard Kipling’s classic tale The Jungle Book – in the name of tiger conservation, according to Survival International.

Evicted tribespeople report that the Forest Department threatened to release elephants to trample their houses and crops if they did not leave immediately.

The area is the ancestral home of the Baiga and Gond tribes, who face a desperate future without their forests. Across India, many more face a similar threat.

The families were harassed for years to leave the reserve. When they were finally evicted, they received no land or help in establishing their lives outside. Months after their eviction, families report that they have received only a fraction of the compensation they were expecting – others have received nothing.

“We got some money, but we are lost – wandering in search of land”, said a tribesperson evicted from Jholar village in Kanha. “Here there is only sadness. We need the jungle.”

All in violation of Indian law

The communities have now been scattered among the surrounding villages. One Baiga man told Survival before the eviction: “They want to give us money. We don’t want money. We want land. Money doesn’t mean anything to us. It comes and it goes.”

In a similar eviction in December 2013, 32 Khadia families were moved out of Similipal Tiger Reserve in Odisha state and were living in dire conditions under plastic sheets. They have not received the compensation they were promised.

In a letter to India’s Tiger Conservation Authority, Survival reports: “Since their eviction, families report having had to ‘scatter’ to different villages; receiving abuse, including racial abuse, from residents of the villages where they are trying to settle; being tricked and cheated by middle men and land agents; and feeling lost, frightened and without means of livelihood or hope for their future.”

It also accuses the Tiger Authority of gross infringements of the tribal peoples legal rights to stay in, live from, and protect their forests as enshrined in both Indian and international law.

As Survival points out in a letter to the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), which has been providing infrastructural support, training and equipment for frontline Forest Department staff:

“The evictions are also illegal under both the Wildlife (Protection) Act Amendment (2006) and the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006 (FRA) because the gram sabhas (village councils) of these villages did not give their free, prior, informed consent and people left under duress.

“A vital prerequisite to relocation under both acts is that villagers’ forest rights should be recognised, but this process had hardly begun in these villages, and many people did not even know about the FRA.”

None of the required conditions were fulfilled in Kanha.

The ugly side of conservation

“What’s happening in Kanha epitomizes the ugly side of the conservation industry”, said Survival’s Director Stephen Corry. “Thousands of tourists career through the park in noisy jeeps, clamoring to take photos of the beleaguered tigers. Meanwhile, Baiga communities that have carefully managed the tiger’s habitat over generations are annihilated by forced evictions.

“The irony appears to be lost on the conservationists. If India doesn’t allow the Baiga and Gond to return and prevent further villagers being kicked out, these communities will be completely destroyed. Evicting tribes won’t save the tiger. Tribal peoples are the best conservationists.”

In response to similar heavy-handed and misguided indigenous evictions around the world, Survival has launched its ‘Parks Need Peoples‘ campaign, which challenges the current model of conservation.

The core demands are that conservation programs must stick to international law, protect tribal peoples’ rights to their lands, ask them what help they need in protecting their lands, listen to them, and then be prepared to back them up as much as they can.

What next?

Survival is now awaiting from WWF answers to a number of questions, including what steps WWF-India has taken to oppose forced relocations and “ensure that WWF-India is not complicit in this gross abuse of the rights of the families evicted from Kanha”.

It also wishes to know whether WWF’s activities in the area are consistent with its own promises on indigenous peoples, and ILO Convention 169 and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

It has also asked the Tiger Authority to “act with great haste to investigate these illegal evictions, bring to justice those members of the relevant Forest Departments who are responsible for these illegalities and ensure that those who wish to return to their homes in Kanha are assisted to do so.

“We also call on you to enact a moratorium on any further relocations from tiger reserves unless and until it can be assured that all the conditions in the Act will be met in all cases.”

 

 

Source: Survival International.

 

 

 




389029

India: ‘Jungle Book’ tribes illegally evicted from tiger reserve Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




Tribal people have been forcibly evicted from India’s Kanha Tiger Reserve – home of Rudyard Kipling’s classic tale The Jungle Book – in the name of tiger conservation, according to Survival International.

Evicted tribespeople report that the Forest Department threatened to release elephants to trample their houses and crops if they did not leave immediately.

The area is the ancestral home of the Baiga and Gond tribes, who face a desperate future without their forests. Across India, many more face a similar threat.

The families were harassed for years to leave the reserve. When they were finally evicted, they received no land or help in establishing their lives outside. Months after their eviction, families report that they have received only a fraction of the compensation they were expecting – others have received nothing.

“We got some money, but we are lost – wandering in search of land”, said a tribesperson evicted from Jholar village in Kanha. “Here there is only sadness. We need the jungle.”

All in violation of Indian law

The communities have now been scattered among the surrounding villages. One Baiga man told Survival before the eviction: “They want to give us money. We don’t want money. We want land. Money doesn’t mean anything to us. It comes and it goes.”

In a similar eviction in December 2013, 32 Khadia families were moved out of Similipal Tiger Reserve in Odisha state and were living in dire conditions under plastic sheets. They have not received the compensation they were promised.

In a letter to India’s Tiger Conservation Authority, Survival reports: “Since their eviction, families report having had to ‘scatter’ to different villages; receiving abuse, including racial abuse, from residents of the villages where they are trying to settle; being tricked and cheated by middle men and land agents; and feeling lost, frightened and without means of livelihood or hope for their future.”

It also accuses the Tiger Authority of gross infringements of the tribal peoples legal rights to stay in, live from, and protect their forests as enshrined in both Indian and international law.

As Survival points out in a letter to the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), which has been providing infrastructural support, training and equipment for frontline Forest Department staff:

“The evictions are also illegal under both the Wildlife (Protection) Act Amendment (2006) and the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006 (FRA) because the gram sabhas (village councils) of these villages did not give their free, prior, informed consent and people left under duress.

“A vital prerequisite to relocation under both acts is that villagers’ forest rights should be recognised, but this process had hardly begun in these villages, and many people did not even know about the FRA.”

None of the required conditions were fulfilled in Kanha.

The ugly side of conservation

“What’s happening in Kanha epitomizes the ugly side of the conservation industry”, said Survival’s Director Stephen Corry. “Thousands of tourists career through the park in noisy jeeps, clamoring to take photos of the beleaguered tigers. Meanwhile, Baiga communities that have carefully managed the tiger’s habitat over generations are annihilated by forced evictions.

“The irony appears to be lost on the conservationists. If India doesn’t allow the Baiga and Gond to return and prevent further villagers being kicked out, these communities will be completely destroyed. Evicting tribes won’t save the tiger. Tribal peoples are the best conservationists.”

In response to similar heavy-handed and misguided indigenous evictions around the world, Survival has launched its ‘Parks Need Peoples‘ campaign, which challenges the current model of conservation.

The core demands are that conservation programs must stick to international law, protect tribal peoples’ rights to their lands, ask them what help they need in protecting their lands, listen to them, and then be prepared to back them up as much as they can.

What next?

Survival is now awaiting from WWF answers to a number of questions, including what steps WWF-India has taken to oppose forced relocations and “ensure that WWF-India is not complicit in this gross abuse of the rights of the families evicted from Kanha”.

It also wishes to know whether WWF’s activities in the area are consistent with its own promises on indigenous peoples, and ILO Convention 169 and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

It has also asked the Tiger Authority to “act with great haste to investigate these illegal evictions, bring to justice those members of the relevant Forest Departments who are responsible for these illegalities and ensure that those who wish to return to their homes in Kanha are assisted to do so.

“We also call on you to enact a moratorium on any further relocations from tiger reserves unless and until it can be assured that all the conditions in the Act will be met in all cases.”

 

 

Source: Survival International.

 

 

 




389029

India: ‘Jungle Book’ tribes illegally evicted from tiger reserve Updated for 2026

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Tribal people have been forcibly evicted from India’s Kanha Tiger Reserve – home of Rudyard Kipling’s classic tale The Jungle Book – in the name of tiger conservation, according to Survival International.

Evicted tribespeople report that the Forest Department threatened to release elephants to trample their houses and crops if they did not leave immediately.

The area is the ancestral home of the Baiga and Gond tribes, who face a desperate future without their forests. Across India, many more face a similar threat.

The families were harassed for years to leave the reserve. When they were finally evicted, they received no land or help in establishing their lives outside. Months after their eviction, families report that they have received only a fraction of the compensation they were expecting – others have received nothing.

“We got some money, but we are lost – wandering in search of land”, said a tribesperson evicted from Jholar village in Kanha. “Here there is only sadness. We need the jungle.”

All in violation of Indian law

The communities have now been scattered among the surrounding villages. One Baiga man told Survival before the eviction: “They want to give us money. We don’t want money. We want land. Money doesn’t mean anything to us. It comes and it goes.”

In a similar eviction in December 2013, 32 Khadia families were moved out of Similipal Tiger Reserve in Odisha state and were living in dire conditions under plastic sheets. They have not received the compensation they were promised.

In a letter to India’s Tiger Conservation Authority, Survival reports: “Since their eviction, families report having had to ‘scatter’ to different villages; receiving abuse, including racial abuse, from residents of the villages where they are trying to settle; being tricked and cheated by middle men and land agents; and feeling lost, frightened and without means of livelihood or hope for their future.”

It also accuses the Tiger Authority of gross infringements of the tribal peoples legal rights to stay in, live from, and protect their forests as enshrined in both Indian and international law.

As Survival points out in a letter to the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), which has been providing infrastructural support, training and equipment for frontline Forest Department staff:

“The evictions are also illegal under both the Wildlife (Protection) Act Amendment (2006) and the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006 (FRA) because the gram sabhas (village councils) of these villages did not give their free, prior, informed consent and people left under duress.

“A vital prerequisite to relocation under both acts is that villagers’ forest rights should be recognised, but this process had hardly begun in these villages, and many people did not even know about the FRA.”

None of the required conditions were fulfilled in Kanha.

The ugly side of conservation

“What’s happening in Kanha epitomizes the ugly side of the conservation industry”, said Survival’s Director Stephen Corry. “Thousands of tourists career through the park in noisy jeeps, clamoring to take photos of the beleaguered tigers. Meanwhile, Baiga communities that have carefully managed the tiger’s habitat over generations are annihilated by forced evictions.

“The irony appears to be lost on the conservationists. If India doesn’t allow the Baiga and Gond to return and prevent further villagers being kicked out, these communities will be completely destroyed. Evicting tribes won’t save the tiger. Tribal peoples are the best conservationists.”

In response to similar heavy-handed and misguided indigenous evictions around the world, Survival has launched its ‘Parks Need Peoples‘ campaign, which challenges the current model of conservation.

The core demands are that conservation programs must stick to international law, protect tribal peoples’ rights to their lands, ask them what help they need in protecting their lands, listen to them, and then be prepared to back them up as much as they can.

What next?

Survival is now awaiting from WWF answers to a number of questions, including what steps WWF-India has taken to oppose forced relocations and “ensure that WWF-India is not complicit in this gross abuse of the rights of the families evicted from Kanha”.

It also wishes to know whether WWF’s activities in the area are consistent with its own promises on indigenous peoples, and ILO Convention 169 and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

It has also asked the Tiger Authority to “act with great haste to investigate these illegal evictions, bring to justice those members of the relevant Forest Departments who are responsible for these illegalities and ensure that those who wish to return to their homes in Kanha are assisted to do so.

“We also call on you to enact a moratorium on any further relocations from tiger reserves unless and until it can be assured that all the conditions in the Act will be met in all cases.”

 

 

Source: Survival International.

 

 

 




389029

Amazon tribes’ forests are a vital carbon sink Updated for 2026

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Scientists in the US and Latin America have once again confirmed the importance of the Amazon rainforest as a planetary resource and as a carbon sink to store carbon drawn down from the atmosphere. Sadly, they have also confirmed, once again, that it is at risk.

New research, released in time for the UN climate change conference being held in Lima, Peru, shows that 55% of the Amazon’s carbon is in the indigenous territories that are home to the regions’s 385 tribal peoples, or in formally-designated protected natural areas.

The forests are critical to the stability of the global climate, but also to the cultural identity of the forest dwellers of the region and the extraordinarily diverse ecosystems they inhabit.

Indigenous forests are carbon-rich forests

“The territories of the Amazonian indigenous peoples store almost a third of the region’s above-ground carbon on just under a third of the land area”, said Wayne Walker, an ecologist and remote sensing specialist at the Woods Hole Research Centre, US, and lead author of a paper published in the journal Carbon Management.

“This is more forest carbon than is contained in some of the most carbon-rich tropical forests, including Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”

The authors also found that nearly 20% of tropical forests across the Amazon are threatened by legal and illegal logging, new roads, dams and the growth of agriculture, mining and the petroleum industries, at least in part because governments had failed to either recognise or enforce the land rights of indigenous peoples.

The Amazon forest under study is a mosaic of 2,344 indigenous territories and 610 protected areas spread across nine nations. In terms of biological, cultural and linguistic diversity, these areas are exceptional.

They are also the cornerstone of conservation efforts. In this century alone, 253,000 square kilometres of Amazon rainforest – an area bigger than the UK – has been lost for a mix of reasons. And land rights of the indigenous peoples are also under attack, notably in Peru and Brazil, with more than half by area at risk.

‘Protected’ forests are more insecure than ever

A loss to the Amazon peoples would also be a loss to the planet. The Amazon rainforest is a unique resource in biodiversity and is also a carbon sink of global importance.

Every tree is a reservoir of atmospheric carbon. Every felled tree or patch of burned forest is so much carbon dioxide back in the atmosphere, to fuel global warming. The scientists warn that the carbon stored in these supposedly secure landscapes is enough to destabilise the planet’s atmosphere – or contribute to its stability.

“If all the current plans for economic development in the Amazon are actually implemented, the region would become a giant savanna, with islands of forest”, said one of the authors, Beto Ricardo, of Brazil’s SocioEnvironmental Institute (Instituto Socioambiental).

“A vast proportion of indigenous territories and protected areas are increasingly at risk, with potentially disastrous consequences, including 40% of indigenous territories, 30% of protected areas, and 24% of the area that pertains to both.”

 

Tim Radford writes for Climate News Network

 

 




387790

Amazon tribes’ forests are a vital carbon sink Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




Scientists in the US and Latin America have once again confirmed the importance of the Amazon rainforest as a planetary resource and as a carbon sink to store carbon drawn down from the atmosphere. Sadly, they have also confirmed, once again, that it is at risk.

New research, released in time for the UN climate change conference being held in Lima, Peru, shows that 55% of the Amazon’s carbon is in the indigenous territories that are home to the regions’s 385 tribal peoples, or in formally-designated protected natural areas.

The forests are critical to the stability of the global climate, but also to the cultural identity of the forest dwellers of the region and the extraordinarily diverse ecosystems they inhabit.

Indigenous forests are carbon-rich forests

“The territories of the Amazonian indigenous peoples store almost a third of the region’s above-ground carbon on just under a third of the land area”, said Wayne Walker, an ecologist and remote sensing specialist at the Woods Hole Research Centre, US, and lead author of a paper published in the journal Carbon Management.

“This is more forest carbon than is contained in some of the most carbon-rich tropical forests, including Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”

The authors also found that nearly 20% of tropical forests across the Amazon are threatened by legal and illegal logging, new roads, dams and the growth of agriculture, mining and the petroleum industries, at least in part because governments had failed to either recognise or enforce the land rights of indigenous peoples.

The Amazon forest under study is a mosaic of 2,344 indigenous territories and 610 protected areas spread across nine nations. In terms of biological, cultural and linguistic diversity, these areas are exceptional.

They are also the cornerstone of conservation efforts. In this century alone, 253,000 square kilometres of Amazon rainforest – an area bigger than the UK – has been lost for a mix of reasons. And land rights of the indigenous peoples are also under attack, notably in Peru and Brazil, with more than half by area at risk.

‘Protected’ forests are more insecure than ever

A loss to the Amazon peoples would also be a loss to the planet. The Amazon rainforest is a unique resource in biodiversity and is also a carbon sink of global importance.

Every tree is a reservoir of atmospheric carbon. Every felled tree or patch of burned forest is so much carbon dioxide back in the atmosphere, to fuel global warming. The scientists warn that the carbon stored in these supposedly secure landscapes is enough to destabilise the planet’s atmosphere – or contribute to its stability.

“If all the current plans for economic development in the Amazon are actually implemented, the region would become a giant savanna, with islands of forest”, said one of the authors, Beto Ricardo, of Brazil’s SocioEnvironmental Institute (Instituto Socioambiental).

“A vast proportion of indigenous territories and protected areas are increasingly at risk, with potentially disastrous consequences, including 40% of indigenous territories, 30% of protected areas, and 24% of the area that pertains to both.”

 

Tim Radford writes for Climate News Network

 

 




387790