Encroachment of forest continues to hinder arrival of tigers to Kawal

Encroachment threatens conservation at Kawal Tiger Reserve, with 2 lakh acres affected since 2015. Despite officials retrieving 50,000 acres, habitat disturbance deters tiger movement. The State notified Kumram Bheem corridor to protect migrating tigers and support long-term conservation efforts

Adilabad: Encroachment of forest cover in Kawal Tiger Reserve (KTR) remains a major cause for concern to Forest officials.

The officials said that nearly two lakh acres of forest was occupied in the reserve forest hindering conservation of tigers from 2015 to 2025. They managed to retrieve 50,000 acres of the forest by confronting occupants and sometimes facing physical assaults from the villagers in the last few years.

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“Typically, tigers are peace lovers. They tend to make a forest its home only if it is quiet and undisturbed. They are not entering the reserve due to disturbance caused by encroachment of the forest cover in not only the core, but buffer and corridors of the reserve,” the officials said. They pointed out that the reserve which was comparatively larger than Tadoba Tiger Reserve of neighboring Maharashtra was failing to attract the tigers.

The menace of encroachment was continuing unabated even as the officials are coming forward to give away pieces of land considering the socio-economic background of occupants in different parts. However, even the financially strong communities were found to encroach the forest by bribing greedy officials.

“Around 2,000 hectares of forest cover was occupied Sirichelma section and the Kuntala sections alone. Similarly, teak timber and sand worth Rs 14 lakhs was seized from smugglers from 2020 April to 2025 March,” a forest officer said.

Created in 2012, the core zone of KTR spreads in 893 sq km and buffer zone in 1,120 sq km covering four districts of Adilabad, Kumram Bheem Asifabad, Nirmal and Mancherial. The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) in its report on the status of tigers-2022 said no tigers were detected in the reserve except for a few in Kagaznagar.

Recently, the State government issued an order notifying the corridor of KTR as the Kumram Bheem conservation reserve encompassing 1,492 square kilometers to protect the tigers migrating from Tadoba to Kawal, considering breeding tigers and several inter-state tiger dispersals in Kumram Bheem Asifabad district over the past decade.