Context: Recently, a clash took place between Van Gujjars and the Uttarakhand forest officials in the Rajaji National Park.
Van Gujjar Community

• Van Gujjars are nomadic buffalo-herders inhabiting the foothills of Himalayan states like Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
• They are deep dependent on wild habitats in India and for them, transhumance (the practice of moving livestock from one grazing ground to another in a seasonal cycle) has been a way of life for centuries.
• The idea of home for Van Gujjars has been made precariously tentative because they are repeatedly displaced off their lands and livelihoods.

The plight of the community

• The forests that fall in the boundaries and buffers of the Corbett and Rajaji Tiger Reserves have been the winter grazing grounds for the buffalo-rearing Gujjars for a hundred years.
• But once the parks were notified and the area under the tiger reserves kept being enlarged, the spaces for the pastoralists have been shrinking.
• The Van Gujjars in both parks have faced tremendous repression and harassment at the hands of the forest department.
• 1,000 Van Gujjar families have had no choice but to accept relocation from the Rajaji Reserve.
• In March 2017, the National Tiger Conservation Authority issued an order disallowing recognition of rights under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (FRA) in Tiger Reserves.

About Rajaji National Park

• Rajaji National Park is an Indian national park and tiger reserve that encompasses the Shivaliks, near the foothills of the Himalayas.
• The park is spread over 820 km2 and three districts of Uttarakhand: Haridwar, Dehradun and Pauri Garhwal.
• In 1983, three wildlife sanctuaries in the area were merged into one to constitute the park.
• The park has been named after C. Rajagopalachari (Rajaji), a prominent leader of the Freedom Struggle, the second and last Governor-General of independent India and one of the first recipients of India’s highest civilian award Bharat Ratna (in 1954).
• The Park is also home to the Great Pied Hornbill, Himalayan Pied Kingfisher and the fire tailed sunbird.
• This area is the first staging ground after the migratory birds cross over the Himalayas into the Indian subcontinent.   
• In 2015, Rajaji National Park was notified as a tiger reserve by the central government. Benefits of Tiger Reserve - Protected area for Tigers, Tourist attraction, Huge Development fund for the Park, Eco-Tourism development.

Other Protected Areas in Uttarakhand

• Jim Corbett National Park (first National Park of India).
• Valley of Flowers National Park and Nanda Devi National Park which together are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
• Govind Pashu Vihar National Park and Sanctuary.
• Gangotri National Park.
• Nandhaur Wildlife Sanctuary.