Tea and Tigers

 Tea and Tigers

On the drive from Manimutharu up to the untouched wet evergreen forest of Kalakad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve, our bus passed through a swath of busy tea plantations (and an abandoned golf course, but that’s a story for another day!). Tea plantations…in a tiger reserve? We were mystified. Dr. Soubadra, however, had an explanation for this bizarre occurrence. The Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation had taken out a lease on the land from the Singampatti zamin. This lease, valid until 2028, allowed the company to run tea and coffee plantations, as well as three factories and the adjoining worker settlements in the core area of the tiger reserve. Nearly 10,000 workers are employed by the company and buses shuttle these workers from their settlements to the plantations daily.

 But what are the implications of having active tea plantations in a wildlife-dense region? In other parts of the country, like Assam or West Bengal, human-wildlife conflict is rampant in tea plantations adjacent to forests. Elephants are frequent visitors in tea gardens, being wide-ranging large-bodied mammals, as are big cats. Due to dense cover, tea gardens provide excellent hiding spaces for leopards in particular. Elephants and gaur frequent tea gardens while moving between fragmented forest patches, posing a threat to human workers and damaging crops. Coexistence is key, especially within a tiger reserve when wildlife are protected by law and humans are the outsiders. 

The tea estate within KMTR was eye-opening because it represented the duality of the landscape - a pristine wet evergreen forest with relic species and high endemism, and a human-use landscape with strong cultural and economic identity. Yet, despite the proliferation of tea in this forest, the tiger is still the undisputed king of Agasthyamalai.