In November 2025, India’s Supreme Court issued a ruling banning tourists from using phones in tiger reserves during safaris. The truth is that when trying to photograph animals, vacationers are putting themselves and their guides at risk – not to mention the fact that they are causing the animals to become stressed. New standards are also being developed for safaris in Kenya, where tourists disrupted the wildebeest migration last year. Animal control rules are also being tightened in Svalbard and Sri Lanka. BBC in detail describes In its practical material, the film “Medusa” retells this text.
In November 2025, India’s Supreme Court ordered a ban on mobile phones in major tourist areas in some tiger reserves. It has been recognized that the behavior of tourists using phones poses a significant risk to both humans and animals.
In February 2026, it appeared online videowhere a tiger in Ranthambore Park, Rajasthan, was surrounded by several safari cars – the animal did not know how to make its way between the cars that were filled with screaming and photographing tourists. The tiger in the video appears frightened and cornered. In India, such “traffic jams on safari” have become common.
Now, under the decree, tourists must leave their phones in a box before entering the reserve. Or turn it to silent mode and not take it out while visiting the park. Night safaris have also been banned.
Indian journalist Charukesi Ramadurai describes the reasons for this decision as follows:
People act recklessly when trying to take pictures with animals. There were instances where the phone fell and the guides had to jump out of the pocket to pick it up. There was a case where a child fell out of a jeep because the mother was taking a selfie and the child was pushed out. The guide had to jump out and pick up the child – the tiger was just a few steps away.
The Bengal tiger remains an endangered species despite its numbers doubling between 2010 and 2022, thanks to conservation work in India. Today there are more than 3,600 wild Bengal tigers in the country, about 75% of the world’s population. Most live in official tiger reserves, including Ranthambore Park in Rajasthan and Jim Corbett National Park in Uttarakhand.
But as the population grew, so did the popularity of safaris. In the past five years, 418 people have been accidentally killed by tigers in India (the BBC report does not indicate whether these cases are directly linked to safari).
It’s not just selfies taken by tourists that are dangerous, says travel company Nature Safari India CEO Sharad Kumar Vats. Drivers communicate via WhatsApp and tell each other where tigers congregate, causing traffic jams on safari trips. Posts on social networks with geotags work in the same way – for example, people tag watering places for tigers and their cubs. “If we are not sensitive to tigers, they will disappear,” Vats concludes. “When there are no tigers, there will be no tiger tourism.”
The new regulation also gives priority to developing guest houses over large hotels that encourage mass tourism. Tour operators have been given three to six months to introduce new measures. Whether there will be an impact will be assessed later, when the reserves are opened after the monsoon season.
India is not the only country where animal control regulations are being tightened. Last year it also appeared online video From Kenya, where tourists interfere with the migration of wildebeest by blocking their path. Subsequently, the Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife changed and tightened the criteria for tour operators. In turn, private Kenyan guide Zarek Kokar believes that the problem does not lie only in phones:
Photographers with big lenses who are eager to get out of the Jeep to get a better angle can be much worse criminals than someone who calmly takes a photo with a phone.
The deeper problem is often that expectations are not set correctly from the beginning. If guests arrive thinking that the goal of a wildlife encounter is to get close or get a dramatic shot at all costs, the guide is under tremendous pressure.
Even new rules came into force last year in Svalbard, with tourists now having to maintain a distance of 300 to 500 meters from bears, depending on the season. Sri Lankan tour operators, in turn, asked the state to intervene in regulation – as there were too many tourists in the national parks.