Wildlife-tourism, local communities and tiger conservation: A village-level study in Corbett Tiger Reserve, India

This paper presents the results of research conducted in a village on the south-eastern boundary of Corbett Tiger Reserve (CTR) which has experienced rapid and dramatic social-ecological change as a result of tiger-related tourism. Our aim was to better understand the impacts of wildlife tourism on the forest ecosystem, village structure, solidarity and institutions and consider the implications of this for tiger conservation management and policy. Our results indicate that while wildlife tourism established linkages between the village society and the global economy, it negatively impacted the local community and ecology. It also created a new village entity, tourist resorts, which are neither an individual nor a village member making dispute-resolution impossible under existing institutional structures. Our results suggest that future forest and conservation policy and management strategies should de-emphasize the monetary function of wildlife-tourism, and instead focus on building social capital and strengthening local institutions. This will likely increase the adaptive capacity of villages to the impacts of tourism and mitigate the associated ecological impacts. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.