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Article History

Received: 10 March 2024

Accepted: 4 April 2025

First Online: 6 May 2025

Declarations

:

: All human subject research was conducted as per the guidelines set by the CWS Institutional Review Board following norms set by the Ethical Considerations and Approval for Research Involving Human Participants of the University of Leicester, the Ethical Guidelines for Good Research Practice, Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth, and the Ethical Guidelines for Social Science Research in Health, National Committee for Ethics in Social Science Research in Health, India (2000). All human subject research was approved by CWS IRB vide approval # CWS_IRB_2022_04 dated 16th April, 2024. Permission for working with tribal communities was granted by the District Adi Dravidar & Tribal Welfare Office, The Nilgiris, Government of Tamil Nadu, vide letter # H5/19610/2021 dated 7th April, 2022. Permission to work inside the MTR was granted by the Tamil Nadu Forest Department vide permission #13, dated 9th March, 2022.

: All respondents and participants were informed about the study and its purpose, the privacy of their data, how it was going to be used, and how all of this required their voluntary participation as recorded in a verbal (recorded as audio message) or written (taken on pre-printed consent forms) consent. Only those consenting to be interviewed and to the use of the data provided for our research purposes were interviewed. All participants (respondents) of the study consented to the use of their data for research and publication purposes on condition of anonymity. Each interview / respondent was identified by a number (anonymized) for the purpose of analysis and publication. All consent (oral and written) can be made available if/ where required.

: The authors declare no competing interests.