TOI correspondent from London: Save the tiger. Sell ​​the forest. Destroy people. to stop. Tribal communities from Karnataka, Kerala and forests spread across the country Tamil Nadu There has been a pushback against wildlife tourism and tiger reserve expansion, accusing forest officials and conservation groups of turning ancestral homelands into a commercial safari “spectacle”, while indigenous families are evicted and forced into marginalization.More than 35 tribal villages under the Nagarhole Adivasi Jamma Pale Hakku Sthapana Samiti of Kodagu and Mysuru in the forest region of Karnataka, about 220 km southwest of Bengaluru, on Thursday issued a joint “Nagarhole Declaration” demanding an immediate stop to all transfers from the forests, saying none were voluntary.The announcement came after a marathon community dialogue held at Balekavu village inside the Nagarhole forests from May 5 to 7, where tribal activists from Wayanad in northern Kerala, the Muthanga Wildlife Area near the Kerala-Karnataka border, the Sathyamangalam tiger landscape in western Tamil Nadu and the Mudumalai Reserve in the Nilgiris gathered to form a common front in the Western Ghats tiger belt.Their charge was clear: forests once visited, hunted, worshiped and buried by indigenous communities are being fenced, branded and monetized through tiger safaris and conservation projects without the forest dwellers’ consent.The manifesto accused the forest department and the National Tiger Conservation Authority of usurping customary land and turning it into a “commercial spectacle”. It says, “What the forest bureaucracy calls core areas or critical tiger habitat is our ancestral land, our sacred space.”It says the Forest Rights Act of 2006, designed to address historical injustice against forest communities, has failed to protect them on the ground. Instead, “the injustice continues” through safari jeeps driving on lands where “our ancestors walked and are buried”, through conservation schemes imposed on villages and through generations trapped in bonded labor on tea and coffee plantations.“It is unconscionable that in states like Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu that proclaim themselves as champions of social justice, thousands of tribal families remain trapped in conditions that can only honestly be described as slavery,” the manifesto said.The document portrays the conservation fight in historical contexts, arguing that the violence unleashed under colonial forest laws never ended after independence, but only “put on a green uniform under the mask of conservation”.Tribal people alleged that notifications declaring national parks and tiger reserves were put forward without following legal procedures. He demanded that the ancestral areas be recognized as “Scheduled Areas” under the Constitution, giving stronger self-governance rights to tribal communities.The declaration claimed that forest and tourism departments in the three states have “no legitimate authority” to operate, license or commercialize wildlife safaris on traditional tribal lands without the informed consent of village councils. It demanded immediate suspension of all safari operations until such consent was obtained.The sharpest words were aimed at wildlife NGOs supporting a fortress-style conservation model. “Conservation that requires us, the indigenous people, to be evicted from the land is not conservation. This is colonization,” the declaration said.Activists said the fight over forests is no longer just about wildlife conservation. It is about whether ancient indigenous footprints will survive under the tire tracks of rapidly expanding safari tourism. Jenu Kuruba activist JK Thimma said, “We are the first people of this land. We are not encroachers.” “There is no conflict between us and the animals in the forest.”The declaration said that the rights guaranteed under the Forest Rights Act – which recognizes forest dwellers as custodians of forest resources – have allegedly been ignored, rendering many tribal communities “constitutionally invisible”.