Perilous proposal

Villages near Jim Corbett Tiger Reserve oppose plans to open yet another ecotourism zone in light of rising attacks by the big cats

- HIMANSHU NITNAWARE

ON THE morning of January 9 this year, 56-year-old Bhuvanchand left his house in Uttarakhand's Kyari village to collect fodder for his cattle from the forest. “He would usually return by 2 pm. But that day, there was no sign of him till late evening,” recalls Nirmala Belwal, Bhuvanchand’s wife. So Belwal and her son, Pawan, went to find Bhuvanchand. They saw grass soaked in blood just 3 km inside the forest. Bhuvanchand’s body lay a further 2 km away, mauled to death by a tiger.

This was the first tiger attack in 50 years seen in Kyari, located in the Ramnagar forest division on the fringes of the Jim Corbett Tiger Reserve. That same week, nearby villages Chhoi and Dhela reported similar attacks. Overall, between March 2024 and March 2025, the forest division saw 12 tiger attacks, a senior forest official tells Down To Earth (DTE) on condition of anonymity. “Sensing a tiger or an elephant nearby while collecting grass from the forest has never bothered us. But increasing ecotourism is changing the behaviour of animals adversely,” says Bhagwati Sati, a farmer from Kyari.