Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Tiger Reserve:
Two prominent religious institutions and two businessmen are among those served eviction notices in the Biligiri Ranganatha Temple (BRT) Tiger Reserve recently.
- It is located in the BR Hills (Biligirirangana Hills) in Chamarajanagar District of Karnataka.
- This unique Bio-geographical habitat is in the middle of the bridge between Western and Eastern ghats
- It was declared a Tiger Reserve in 2011.
- It is spread over an area of 574.82 sq.km. and lies at an elevation of 5,091 feet above sea level.
- The reserve gets its name from Biligiri, meaning “white rocky cliff,” which is home to the ancient Rangaswamy Temple dedicated to Lord Vishnu.
- It is also believed that the hill range gets its name due to white mist and silvery clouds which cover these lofty hills for a greater part of the year.
- There is a tribal community living within the tiger reserve known as the Soliga tribe.
- Soligas was the first tribal community living inside a tiger reserve and getting their forest rights recognised by a court in a judgment in 2011.
- It is covered with a variety of species of plant life, including scrub, dry deciduous, moist deciduous, shola forests, and montane grasslands.
- The major species include Anogeissus latifolia, Dalbergia paniculata, Grewia teliaefolia, Terminalia alata, Terminalia bellirica, Terminalia paniculata, etc.
- Animals including tiger, elephant, leopard, wild dog, bison, sambar, spotted deer, barking deer, four-horned antelope, sloth bear, wild boar, common langur, bonnet macaque, varieties of reptiles, birds, etc., are found in the Tiger Reserve.
