Officer Advices Tourists to ‘Behave Like Animals’, Netizens Highlight Need to Protect Lakshadweep

An Indian Bureaucrat has asked the tourists to ‘behave like animals’ while visiting forests and jungles. An Indian Forest Service officer Parveen Kaswan highlighting the trash left behind by tourists in the forest said that there is a need to act like animals. 

Explaining his advice, IFS Parveen Kaswan said that tourists visiting forests must "act like animals," as animals do not leave behind trash. The IFS officer shared images of forest rangers collecting heaps of trash including chip packets and plastic bottles from the forest. 

“Dukchen Bhutia is our range officer. Went to field with a group. Found a lot of trash thrown by tourists and decided to collect all. She is showing the way. In Forest behave like animals, they don't spread the trash,” said IFS Parveen Kaswan  in a post on X (formerly Twitter). 

As the officer raised the issue of trash dumped at tourist sites, netizens emphasised that there is a need to protect the islands such as Andaman and Nicobar and Lakshadweep owing to their fragile ecosystem. "This is probably one of the reasons why Lakshadweep and Andaman needs to be protected from tourism... We kind of lack discipline with regards to waste management,” said a user while replying to Kaswan’s post. 

While other user suggested that there must be penalty for throwing trash around at the tourist spots in order to correct the attitude of people. “There should be fines for violators and mandatory fees for environmental protection/clean up which should be used to keep clean forests," said a user.