BR Hills: The Only Tiger Reserve to House Indigenous Community

In this episode of Save Our Tigers campaign, we take you to BR Hills or the Biligiriranga Hills, which is an extremely bio-diverse and rich in its eco system. It's at the confluence of the eastern and the western ghats, which means it mixes the bio-diversity of both. Several species of the animals here are endemic to this area, it is also has a very rich biological wildlife corridor which goes all the way from Karnataka across into the Tamil Nadu. But another thing that makes BR Hills very unique compared to most of the other tiger reserves in country is that it's the only tiger reserve where the indigenous communities have the right to their land. They are allowed to live on their ancestral land in the tiger reserve and what is even more interesting is that they were given the right to conserve, making them stake holders in this whole effort to protect the tiger reserves along with the forest department. So the big question now is, will the pantheistic belief of the Soliga tribe and the work that has been done by the forest department, be worked together? And what does that really mean for the future of tigers in this landscape.