Regulate forest trails, don't shut them down

Karnataka has suspended the use of paths and trails inside forest areas with wildlife presence. The order is effective from May 11 till further notice. It is prompted by the death of a 10-year-old boy who was attacked by a leopard in the Nagamale Forest of the MM Hills, Chamarajanagar district, on May 10. How does the May 11 suspension order provide relief on the ground? Does the pace of administrative action suggest an ‘order-first and think-later’ approach? How does the order take into account the standard operating procedure (SOP) for trekking in forests, notified just this April? 

The trekking SOP was notified when, in two separate incidents, trekkers lost their path, and while one was traced and rescued, the other was found dead inside the forest. Developed by the Karnataka Forest Department, the SOP is a comprehensive regulatory and prescriptive document with mandatory online registration, safety briefings, one nature guide for every 10 trekkers, a cap of 150 persons per trail, GPS-enabled communication, and base-camp monitoring. It clearly recognises the risks inside forests and promotes guided access, not casual entry. 

The SOP, however, does not cover the movement of devotees to temples within forests, nor that of people visiting forest-enclosure villages. People moving loosely through a wildlife-conflict-prone landscape is not the same as a supervised trek run under published rules, fixed group sizes, trained guides and live communication systems. Movement inside forests demands wildlife-risk communication, route management, and emergency response. 

According to news reports, the Nagamale tragedy involved a family group that had entered the forests at the MM Hills temple. How should the risk to temple devotees and visitors to forest-enclosure villages from provoked or unprovoked attacks by wild animals be managed? Should the movement be regulated? How? What institutional and infrastructural arrangements are necessary to regulate?

The Nagamale incident highlights a governance gap, as no mechanism is in place to handhold the unsupervised visits to the forests. In this regard, the readily available Aranya Vihaara digital platform of the Karnataka Forest Department, which manages publicly administered routes with advanced booking systems, reporting instructions, slot controls, and track-specific advisories, can be easily adapted. While the government can provide the physical infrastructure to manage visits of those not undertaking organised treks in forests, the trained manpower can be sourced from civil society organisations and private individuals on a commercial basis.

Recognised and authorised organisations can provide nature guide training to address the availability of trained manpower for nature interpretation and guided movement inside forests. Such training provides opportunities, including for tribal and rural youth in forested areas, to work as guides, naturalists, and ecopreneurs. They can accompany the people visiting temples and forest-enclosure villages in forest areas and ensure their safety. 

Visits to forests, whether to undertake structured trekking activity or for pilgrimage, need not be prohibited but limited to the carrying capacity. The public policy in this regard cannot lurch between promotion and prohibition. The extant policy framework is people-centric and adopts a precautionary approach. The GOI National Tiger Conservation Authority’s ecotourism framework also points to low-impact, rule-bound public access within ecological limits. 

Karnataka’s April SOP broadly followed that logic through carrying-capacity rules, registration, tracking and guiding accountability. Karnataka now has a choice. It can continue with headline-friendly closures that project urgency but evade responsibility. Or it can do the harder, more credible thing: classify routes by ecological sensitivity and difficulty level; make naturalist-led movement inside forests non-negotiable; enforce real-time compliance; shut down only those stretches that are seasonally dangerous or administratively non-compliant; and communicate risks up front. 

Forests are habitats first, and wildlife is not to blame for conflicts arising from governance gaps. Neither should local livelihoods be sacrificed to overreaction. Homestays, transport operators, food vendors, guides and small eco-tourism enterprises have grown around legal, supervised access to natural areas; they need stable rules, not fitful shutdowns. 

Suspending the use of paths and trails in forest areas is no substitute for guided access, route-level oversight, and consistent enforcement.  

(The writer is a former Indian Forest Service officer, Karnataka Cadre)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.