Alongside poachers, illegal timber smugglers and destructive tourists, the T.N. Forest Department now faces a new challenge – YouTubers. Over the past few years, forest divisions across the State, including in the Nilgiris, have had to contend with cracking down on vloggers trespassing into eco-sensitive, reserved forests, putting both themselves as well as native wildlife at risk.
On Monday, February 12, 2024, a YouTube channel, ‘Cherry Vlogs,’ with 13.9 lakh followers at the time of writing, released a 27-minute vlog of vloggers not only trespassing into a reserved forest in the Nilgiris forest division, but also riding motorcycles off-road in the forest and using drones to capture aerial footage of their surroundings.
