IWN Report — Thursday, 21 May 2026

Karnataka has ended open-vehicle wildlife safaris across all its tiger reserves and wildlife sanctuaries. The announcement, made by Forest Minister Eshwar B. Khandre this week, is the latest in a series of safety measures following two years of escalating leopard and tiger attacks on visitors and forest-fringe communities across the state.

Open jeeps and open camper vehicles will no longer be permitted in any of Karnataka’s five tiger reserves — Bandipur, Nagarahole, Bhadra, Kali, and B.R. Hills — or in its wildlife sanctuaries, including MM Hills, Dandeli, and K. Gudi. Existing open campers still in service will be fitted with unbreakable glass or iron mesh to prevent animal contact. Bus safaris will be given priority going forward.

The state will also station an ambulance near all safari counters as a standing emergency measure.

What prompted the decision

The announcement follows an accumulation of incidents that has significantly shifted the public and political calculus around safari safety in Karnataka.

In August 2025, a leopard entered a safari vehicle at the Bannerghatta Biological Park in Bengaluru and attacked a 12-year-old boy, leaving deep gashes on his hand. The incident — captured on video and widely circulated — prompted Minister Khandre to immediately direct all parks to install wire mesh on vehicle windows and photography openings. The Bannerghatta leopard safari enclosure, which covers 20 hectares and is India’s largest, had been operating non-AC bus safaris at the time. Three months later, in November 2025, a 56-year-old woman was attacked in a near-identical incident at the same park when a leopard attempted to climb into another non-AC safari bus. The park suspended non-AC safari services indefinitely following the second attack.

More seriously, October and November 2025 saw a sequence of fatal tiger attacks in the Bandipur-Nagarahole landscape of Mysuru and Chamarajanagar districts. Three people were killed in tiger attacks within a single month in the Saragur and Moleyur ranges — the most recent being Chowdiah Naik in Hale Heggodilu village. On 7 November 2025, Minister Khandre ordered the complete suspension of safaris in Bandipur and Nagarahole tiger reserves, diverting all safari staff and drivers to conflict surveillance and rescue operations. The suspension was the longest in the recent history of Karnataka’s wildlife tourism sector.

More recently, a 10-year-old boy was killed in a leopard attack near Nagamale in the Cauvery Wildlife Division, close to Male Mahadeshwara Hills, prompting the Forest Department to issue a circular restricting trekking and public access in areas with known movement of leopards, tigers, elephants, and bears. Foot trekking to Mahadeshwara Hills has now been restricted to specific festival periods.

The five-month suspension and its economic toll

The Bandipur-Nagarahole safari suspension, which remained in place from 7 November 2025 until a phased resumption was announced in April 2026, extracted a significant economic cost from Karnataka’s ecotourism sector. The Karnataka Eco-Tourism Resorts Association (KETRA) estimated that member resorts and tourism businesses in the Bandipur-Nagarahole landscape were collectively losing approximately Rs 3 crore per day during the suspension period, while Jungle Lodges and Resorts and the Forest Department together were losing an estimated Rs 60–70 lakh daily in safari-linked revenues and fees. Occupancies at several properties dropped from roughly 75–80 per cent in late 2024 to around 30–40 per cent during the same period in 2025–26. Many tourists migrated to the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve in Tamil Nadu, approximately 15 km from Bandipur, during this period.

The Karnataka State Board of Wildlife commissioned an expert committee — comprising the Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, a Wildlife Institute of India scientist, and an Indian Institute of Forest Management professor — to study the impact of safari operations on wildlife. The committee’s interim report, submitted in early 2026, found no scientific basis to conclude that safari operations were directly responsible for tigers straying into human settlements. Bandipur covers 1,036 sq km in total, of which only 80 sq km — approximately 8% — is designated as a tourism zone; Nagarahole covers 844 sq km with 63 sq km (7.5%) earmarked for ecotourism. Safaris resumed in April 2026 in a phased manner, with reduced vehicle numbers and shorter operating hours.

The new policy — and what it means

The ban on open-vehicle safaris announced this week goes further than any previous measure. It applies not just to the two reserves where the November suspension occurred, but to all five tiger reserves and all wildlife sanctuaries across the state. It is a permanent policy change, not a temporary suspension.

Minister Khandre’s statement was careful to note that, to date, no visitor has been killed or seriously injured during an official open-jeep safari in Karnataka’s tiger reserves and sanctuaries — a distinction from the bus safari attacks at Bannerghatta, which is a biological park rather than a wild reserve. The policy is pre-emptive rather than reactive to a specific open-jeep incident.

The shift to enclosed vehicles and bus safaris will change the nature of the wildlife tourism experience at Karnataka’s reserves. Open jeeps, which allow visitors unobstructed sightlines, natural ambient sound, and close proximity to wildlife, are widely regarded as delivering a qualitatively different safari experience from enclosed buses — a distinction that drives significant premium in the private wildlife tourism market. The implications for Karnataka’s network of private wildlife lodges and camps, many of which market themselves around open-vehicle experiences in association with their properties, are yet to be officially addressed.

Wildlife activists quoted in local media have broadly welcomed the direction of the policy, though some noted it had come late — pointing to multiple documented incidents of wild elephants chasing safari vehicles at Bandipur and Nagarahole as evidence that the risk in open vehicles was not confined to biological parks.

Sources: Deccan Chronicle · Deccan Herald · Deccan Herald (safari resumption) · News Karnataka · Asianet Newsable