Villages in core areas often decide whether a tiger reserve succeeds. Critically analyse the balance between conservation and forest-dwellers' rights.

Tigers need inviolate breeding space, but India's reserves overlap with places where people live and work. Buxa Tiger Reserve covers 757.90 sq km [2]. It has 37 forest villages, 46 fringe villages and 34 tea gardens in and around it [1]. Whether core villages relocate, and how, often decides whether a reserve breeds tigers or merely hosts them.

Why core villages shape conservation outcomes

• Prey and pressure: NTCA linked Buxa's low tiger numbers to human pressure combined with a small prey base [1].
• Reintroduction risk: Sariska was restocked with tigers, but villages, livestock and highways remained in its core. NTCA advised relocating the villages [3].
• Voluntary relocation works: Panna moved 13 of 16 core villages voluntarily [4], and its reintroduced tigresses bred [5].
• Legal basis: The Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, as amended in 2006, provides for inviolate critical tiger habitats.

Forest-dwellers' rights: the counter-view

• Statutory rights: The Forest Rights Act, 2006 recognises rights over forest land and produce. People can be relocated from critical wildlife habitats only after their rights are settled and the Gram Sabha gives free, informed consent [6].
• Unequal burden: Villagers did not cause tiger loss on their own. Sariska's tigers were lost to poaching [3]. Yet villagers bear the highest cost of displacement.
• Coercion backfires: Poorly compensated relocation breeds hostility, retaliatory killing of tigers and collusion with poachers.
• Communities as allies: The Tiger Task Force report Joining the Dots (2005) stressed that protecting tigers depends on the people living around reserves [7].

Striking the balance

• Generous voluntary packages under Project Tiger, with land and livelihoods, so that those who move are better off. This is the Panna model [4].
• Coexistence where relocation is not feasible: prompt conflict compensation, predator-proof livestock enclosures, and jobs in eco-tourism and protection.
• Phased sequencing: restore the prey base and secure consent before releasing more tigers.
• Transparent metrics: publish data on tiger survival, breeding and conflict.

Core villages are neither obstacles to clear nor bystanders; the success or failure of a reserve turns on them. Panna shows what consent-based relocation can achieve, and Sariska shows the cost of ignoring human pressure. Combining inviolate cores with voluntary resettlement that complies with the FRA, and with community stewardship, can secure both tigers and livelihoods (Article 21). This also advances SDG 15 (Life on Land).