"When The Needs Of Endangered Tigers And Endangered People Collide"

"As government works to save big cats from extinction, indigenous forest dwellers pursue peaceful coexistence for man and beast".

"The wild hillocks and the forests of Central India are a world of their own. Nestled on lush green foothills are intermittent clusters of villages, little touched by modern civilization. They are the ancestral home of an ancient indigenous tribe, the Baiga, which has had a symbiotic relationship with these jungles and their biodiversity, preserving them with their knowledge for generations.

These forests are also a part of the Central Indian Landscape, which hosts nearly 40 percent of India’s big cats.

Tigers are classified as endangered Schedule I species under India’s Wildlife Protection Act, which offers them a high degree of protection from human activities such as hunting and poaching. The Baiga, for their part, are categorized as Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group by the Indian government, a designation that safeguards the community’s traditional rights with respect to identity, habitat, sources of subsistence and culture in natural surroundings. Further, the Forest Rights Act, passed by the Indian parliament in 2006, guarantees traditional forest dwellers such as the Baiga rights of habitat and livelihood on jungles they had been living in or using before December 13, 2005."

Moushumi Basu reports for Ensia August 2, 2016.