The forest department is continuing efforts to prevent “outsiders” from bringing their cattle into the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve (MTR), and tasking adivasi communities with taking care of them.
The recent death of a 50-year-old woman, who was killed by a tiger while grazing cattle in the tiger reserve, has put the spotlight on the illegal grazing of cattle in the MTR buffer zone. N. Sadiq Ali, Founder of the Wildlife and Nature Conservation Trust (WNCT), said that it was well-known that communities bordering the tiger reserve often drove their free-ranging cattle into the buffer zone, and pay the tribal communities living in the reserve a salary to take care of the livestock.
“Not only does this increase the chance of diseases being transmitted from cattle to ungulates in the reserve, but also diminishes fodder availability and increases the chances of problematic human-animal interactions,” said Mr. Sadiq, calling for stricter measures to be taken to prevent cattle from being allowed to graze illegally in the reserve.
The free-range cattle are usually released in the reserve by their owners who collect dung from the communities and eventually send the animals to slaughter. Till then, the adivasis are tasked with taking care of the animals and are paid a small salary.
“Nobody has any objections to adivasis being allowed to graze their own cattle, but people from outside the reserve are using the tiger reserve as grazing area and putting the lives of adivasis at risk and contributing to the rise in problematic interactions between humans and wildlife,” he added.
A top forest department official from MTR, acknowledged the issue, but added that steps undertaken by the department over the last few years has significantly reduced the amount of cattle belonging to outsiders being allowed to roam the reserve. “We have slowly been successful in reducing the number of cattle from entering the reserve illegally,” said the official.
Srinivas R. Reddy, Field Director (in-charge) of MTR, said that the issue was far more pronounced a few years ago, when close to 16,000 heads of cattle, most of them belonging to non-tribal communities surrounding the reserve, were inside. “Over the last few years, due to the continuous efforts of the department, the number of cattle has reduced to between 5,000 to 8,000 heads of cattle, and most of them do belong to the local adivasi communities. However, we are continuing our efforts to ensure that cattle from outside the reserve are not allowed to illegally graze inside Mudumalai,” said Mr. Reddy.