Published Feb 16, 2026 | 7:00 AM ⚊ Updated Feb 16, 2026 | 7:00 AM
Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the IBCA in Mysuru in 2023 during the 50th anniversary of Project Tiger.
Synopsis: As Karnataka hosted an international summit on big cat conservation, where global delegates discussed eco-tourism and landscape-based wildlife strategies, tribal leaders alleged that forest rights, consultation, and ancestral claims continue to be ignored. Community members say there has been little to no meaningful engagement with them in conservation decision-making processes over the years.
Across five days last week, the International Big Cat Summit took place in the Bandipur and Nagarhole Tiger Reserves, across Kodagu and Mysuru districts in south-west Karnataka. The International Big Cat Alliance (IBCA), a treaty-based intergovernmental organisation launched by India, organised it with the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), the Government of Karnataka and the Union Ministry of External Affairs.
Sessions centred on sustainable eco-tourism, outreach and landscape-based conservation. They drew wildlife experts and conservationists from 23 countries—including Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Romania and Russia—under the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) Executive Course.
But the indigenous Jenu Kurubas, who have lived in these forests for centuries, had no platform at the summit.
About 200 km north, in Bengaluru, on the final day of the summit on Friday, 13 February, a youth leader from the community sat at the Press Club holding a poster that read: “International Big Cat Alliance is a tool to colonise indigenous lands.”
His name was Shivu JK. Members of the Nagarahole Adivasi Jammapale Hakku Sthapana Samiti (NAJHSS), a federation of Gram Sabhas, sat beside him.
At the summit, the Karnataka Forest Department presented the state’s “best wildlife conservation and management practices”. Indigenous communities say those practices have cost them their homes, livelihoods and, at times, their lives.
The Jenu Kurubas are a honey-gathering community classified as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group. Nagarhole is their ancestral home.
“Forest is the only thing we know,” Shivu said. But they have not been able to freely access, inhabit or govern it in line with their customary rights for decades.
“Ignoring the intense injustices faced by Indigenous communities in conservation areas, governments and international conservation groups, backed by corporate funding, are using IBCA as a facade to further occupy Indigenous lands, intensify their exploitation, and generate humongous profits,” the NAJHSS said in a statement before the summit.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the IBCA in Mysuru in 2023 during the 50th anniversary of Project Tiger. It aims to promote collaboration to conserve seven big cats: tiger, lion, leopard, snow leopard, cheetah, jaguar and puma.
The Union government formally set up the IBCA through the National Tiger Conservation Authority under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change in March 2024. It allocated a one-time budgetary support of ₹150 crore for five years, from 2023–24 to 2027–28.
The IBCA’s stated aim is “to facilitate collaboration and synergy among stakeholders, consolidating successful conservation practices and expertise and replicating them in range countries”. Its mission includes working with local communities as part of that approach. But members of the Jenu Kuruba community say conservation strategies in Karnataka, often carried out with conservation organisations, have long ignored their needs and rights.
Section 38(v)(4) of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, requires the state government, when preparing a Tiger Conservation Plan, to protect the agricultural, livelihood, developmental and other interests of people living in tiger-bearing forests or a tiger reserve.
“Our grama sabha decisions are just ignored. In the name of conservation, the government brings outsiders into our forests. Their way of protecting the forest pushes us out and takes from it,” said Manjula, a Jenu Kuruba from Golur Hadi near HD Kote in Mysuru, addressing the press on Friday.
She said the Nagarahole forests have been their homeland for 16 decades and asked, “Do we not know how to protect our forests?”
Community members point to the history of official decisions in Nagarahole as proof of exclusion. The forests were notified as a protected area in 1870, later declared a wildlife sanctuary, upgraded to a national park in 1988, and designated a critical tiger habitat in 2007. They say these steps were taken without meaningful consultation with Adivasi communities who have lived there for generations.
Kumar Pushkar, PCCF (Wildlife) and Chief Wildlife Warden, Government of Karnataka, told SouthFirst that local communities would be included in wildlife conservation strategies.
“The involvement of local people is important for conservation, especially through eco-development activities and creating awareness. We held discussions around this during the sessions,” Pushkar said.
But he confirmed that delegates, experts and government officials did not directly interact with tribal communities during the summit.
Eco-development activities have usually meant alternative livelihood schemes: hiring local youth as nature guides, safari drivers or trackers, and involving communities in jungle lodges and interpretation centres.
The government has yet to spell out what eco-development will mean under the IBCA. On its website, the IBCA says it aims to:
“Provide training and resources to empower local communities to participate actively in big cat conservation. This can include training in wildlife monitoring, protection patrols, and sustainable resource management practices.”
It also says it will:
“support initiatives that provide alternative income sources for communities, reducing their dependence on unsustainable practices that may harm big cats of their habitats.”
Tribal communities have criticised such “nature-based” solutions and call them “large-scale greenwashing schemes”.
“NAJHSS unequivocally condemns the IBCA and all its members for aggressively pushing false and extractive agendas like nature-based solutions, biodiversity offsetting, wildlife tourism, and green credits, which are nothing but large-scale greenwashing schemes,” the body said in a statement.
Banning safaris has been a key demand. Many safari routes pass over burial and ancestral grounds, community members say. Authorities temporarily suspended safaris in Nagarahole and Bandipur tiger reserves after a rise in tiger attacks in the Sargur and HD Kote areas in late 2025.
Now there is growing pressure on the Tourism Department to restart them. J S Ramakrishna, a member of NAJHSS, called for the ban to continue.
“They have been going deep inside the forest to cut trees. It is to make animals easier to spot for tourists. But when you disturb the forest like that, animals move out and come closer to our villages, and that leads to conflict. That is why the safari ban should continue,” he said.
Tribal communities now fear the safaris will restart as part of a push for eco-tourism.
The summit came just over a month after the Jenu Kuruba led a 13-day padayatra to assert their claim to their ancestral land.
They ended the march by demanding talks with the district collectors of Kodagu and Mysuru. Community members say those talks have not taken place.
Shivu questioned how conservation can involve local communities when officials repeatedly exclude them from deliberations.
On 19 January, after the march, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination wrote to the Government of India in three separate communications about alleged violations of the human rights of Adivasi communities.
One communication pointed to the lack of detailed information on any effective and meaningful consultation with tribal and forest-dwelling Indigenous peoples to secure their free, prior and informed consent for village relocation under the National Tiger Conservation Authority.
“The Committee is concerned about the lack of information concerning the allegations and concerns on the risk of displacement and eviction of the tribal and forest-dwelling Indigenous Peoples without providing adequate alternative housing and compensation to the impacted communities,” the letter said.
The Jenu Kurubas said there has still been no response from the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, the NTCA, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, the Karnataka government or any other authority.
“As our ancestral lands and forests—taken from us over generations—continue to be sacrificed in the name of conservation, tourism, and green credits. We ask: will the international delegates arriving from more than 20 countries for this summit reflect on these truths?” the NAJHSS asked.
(Edited by Dese Gowda)
