This post by Moushumi Basu was originally published on Ensia.com, a magazine that highlights international environmental solutions in action, and is republished here as part of a content-sharing agreement. The wild hillocks and the forests of Central India are a world of their own. Nestled on lush green foothills are intermittent clusters of villages, scarcely touched by modern civilization. They are the ancestral home of an ancient indigenous tribe, the Baiga, which has had a symbiotic relationship with these jungles and their biodiversity, preserving them with their knowledge for generations. These forests are also a part of the Central Indian Landscape, which hosts nearly 40 percent of India’s big cats. Tigers are classified as endangered Schedule I species under India’s Wildlife Protection Act, which offers them a high degree of protection from human activities, such as hunting and poaching. The Baiga, for their part, are categorized as Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group by the Indian government, a designation that safeguards the community’s traditional rights with respect to identity, habitat, sources of subsistence and culture in natural surroundings. Further, the Forest Rights Act, passed by the Indian parliament in 2006, guarantees traditional forest dwellers such as the Baiga rights of habitat and livelihood on jungles they had been living in or using before December 13, 2005. In short, the government has guaranteed both tigers and the Baiga protection to live in their native forest habitat. Representatives of the Baiga community, however, say they are getting uprooted for the sake of the tiger. They contend that government agencies and certain conservation groups see them as obstacles to efforts to save the big cats. In some cases, they say, they are banned from customary use of forest products or arrested under false charges of hunting. They are also lured by the state forest department from the tiger reserves with compensation for leaving and promises of better life outside the forest. What can be done to help vulnerable Baigas and endangered tigers co-exist? Lessons from elsewhere in India offer some promising insights — not only for the Baigas and tigers, but for indigenous communities around the world that find their own survival at odds with the survival of endangered species. The Bhoramdeo Wildlife Sanctuary in the Central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, a 164-square-kilometer (63-square-mile), richly biodiverse forest, sustains pockets of Baiga. It also connects with the sprawling 942-square-kilometer (364-square-mile) Kanha Tiger Reserve in the neighboring state of Madhya Pradesh. Home to some 85 to 100 tigers, Kanha is one of the largest habitats of big cats in Central India. It inspired Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book in the 19th century, and today it is a favorite destination of tourists looking to spot a tiger. They enter the reserve in queues of safari jeeps armed with cameras to catch a sight of the charismatic cat. If they do manage to see one, often pandemonium ensues — with jeeps and noisy, excited crowds jostling their way to the scene. Distressed by the hubbub, many of the tigers migrate into the more peaceful forests inhabited by the Baiga, adding to migrations already occurring as a growing tiger population makes Kanha more crowded with cats. There they draw the attention of government and nongovernmental conservation entities. Although there is no legal provision allowing government officials to force the relocation of villages from wildlife sanctuaries, such as Bhoram Deo, local people say they’re being coerced to leave in order to accommodate the tigers and other wildlife. “Tigers, leopards, or forests have never scared us,” says Phul Singh Baiga, a resident of Bijadhaap, a village with 28 Baiga hutments on the outskirts of Bhoram Deo sanctuary. “But today, we are indeed frightened of the forest department and conservationists. […] In the name of tiger protection, we are being harassed on several pretexts to scare us out of our jungles.” According to B.N. Dwivedi, the principal chief conservator of forests and chief wildlife warden of Chhattisgarh, “There are plans on our part to relocate villages from within sanctuaries and protected areas, as this would make the forest more inviolate for tigers and wildlife. […] But no force is being used to displace settlements. As per the government norms, evacuation of villagers is done with their prior consent — this cannot be done without their acceptance.” But Indu Netam, the convenor of the non-governmental organization Adiwasi Samta Manch, which works with the Baiga and other tribal communities to secure indigenous rights, substantiates the elder’s claims.