It was January 17, 2022, and I was in the Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve (STR) in Erode, Tamil Nadu, a biodiversity-rich protected area (PA) with interspersed forest and agricultural land. My field assistant and I waited on the red concrete steps of the range office for the range forest officer (RFO) to arrive. The range office was a small building, painted yellow with brown windows and a banner displaying its name. A notice board hung on a wall listed the documents the public must submit to seek compensation for crop damage, loss of life, and livestock casualties caused by wildlife. Forest administrators, especially field staff like RFOs, play a key role in implementing conservation and development plans and policies; however,few studies have closely examined their on-the-ground work to understand the context and challenges (Fleischman 2016; Vasan 2002). I was interested in understanding the forest department’s (FD) approach to managing the PA’s land and ecosystem services, both on paper and in practice. The objective was to compare de jure (on paper) and de facto (in practice) FD management approaches. STR management plans (MPs) provided information on the former, and information on the latter came from interviews.