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“There is no scope for any tourism activity left,” says a visibly dejected Mr Aditya Singh, who owns Ranthambore Bagh, a resort at the tiger reserve of the same name in Rajasthan.
Owners of the more than 45 hotels and resorts in Ranthambore National Park face the same plight because of the Supreme Court’s order to ban tourism in the core areas of tiger reserves. They are staring at a revenue loss of Rs 30 crore in the peak season of October to February.
According to resorts/hotels, cancellation of bookings has already started. This, in turn, will affect the large number of families that depend on tourism for their livelihood. In Ranthambore alone, more than 7,000 families depend on tourism, mainly guides and owners/drivers of 400 vehicles and vans that take tourists into the forest.
The situation is similar at the other top national parks such as Corbett and Bandhavgarh. Taj Safaris, which has resorts in Bandhavgarh, Pench, Kanha and Panna National Parks, said it will study the Supreme Court order and decide on the course of action.
The Supreme Court order came in response to a public interest litigation that claimed that tourism activities were putting pressure on critical tiger habitats and that tiger safaris should be shifted to the buffer zones of the parks.
Wildlife conservationists feel that “site-specific directions” should be given instead of a generalised rule. Mr Dharmendra Khandal, Conservation Biologist, Tiger Watch, says: “Ranthambore does not have any buffer zone. What in Ranthambore has been declared a buffer zone by the government is just three small patches of forest land with no vegetation. This will mean a total stop to tourism.”
If tourism stops, villagers will once again be dependent on forest for their livelihood and this will mean a rise in poaching, he added. In most States, tiger tourism happens between October and June and shuts for the monsoon.
“Banning tourism because it is bad today is like banning cricket because there is gambling.
The answer surely is to regulate tourism. By banning tourism in the core areas, the eyes and ears of non-governmental agencies have been walled out of forests where tree-cutting, illegal mining, road building, poaching and worse are rampant,” said Mr Bittu Sehgal, conservationist and editor of Sanctuary Asia .
Mr Amit Sankhala, who is a trustee of Tiger Trust and runs the Kanha Jungle Lodge in Madhya Pradesh, says, “We have started receiving cancellations and we expect this to impact foreign tourist arrivals in the country.”
In a statement, Mr Julian Mathews, Chairman, Travel Operators for Tigers (TOFT), says: “We will file a review of petition in the interest of the forests of India, conservation of the tiger population, and livelihoods of many bordering forest communities.”
(With inputs from Meenakshi Verma Ambwani)
>nivedita.ganguly@thehindu.co.in
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