Villagers cry foul as reserve deprives them of benefits

Nine years after the Kawal Tiger Reserve was established in what was then a unified Adilabad district, there appears to be a change in the mood of people in and around the villages around the tiger reserve that could bode ill for the reserve. Kawal is the second one in Telangana after Amrabad Tiger Reserve spread over Nagarkurnool and Nalgonda districts.

Sources said there was an increasing mood of despondency that employment or income generation from the reserve under wildlife tourism did not materialise despite Kawal Tiger Reserve existing since 2012. The tiger reserve, according to Chandravas, sarpanch of Gangapur village, had prevented development of villages inside the reserve. “We cannot lay roads, or take up any activity even inside the villages without getting a lot of clearances. If a village happens to be inside the core area of the reserve, then it is impossible to get anything done. If it is in the buffer area, then at least the gram panchayats can do something about things such as laying of roads,” he said.

“If we cannot have any income from the reserve, and if it also prevents us from improving lives in the villages, then what good is the tiger reserve for the people?” he asked.

Sources explained that after Kawal Tiger Reserve was established, there were hopes among villages in and around the reserve that the move would lead to tourism on the lines that is practiced in neighbouring Maharashtra’s Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve, or Tipeshwar Wildlife Sanctuary, the latter barely a few kilometres away from the Telangana border.