India is a country with more than 75% of the world’s wild tigers; this is a tiger conservation success story for a country with more than 1.4 billion people and with only 2% of the total forest area of the world. Conservation of big cats or any other potentially dangerous animals in a situation where people compete with them for resources is a big challenge. This challenge appears in the form of man-animal conflict. Managing man-animal conflict and retaliatory killing are some of the challenges that need to be addressed properly and timely; otherwise, a negative perception will be created against the tigers, which can spoil all the efforts done previously.
India conducted its first camera trap-based census in 2006, in which the number of tigers was counted around 1411. The census results shocked everyone because it revealed a figure even lower than the one that prompted the start of Project Tiger. After 33 years of Project Tiger, the population of tigers is even lower than the number of tigers at the time of the launch of Project Tiger.
This finding was a setback to the most ambitious wildlife conservation project in India, ‘The Project Tiger.’ The government and conservationists have realized that there is a need for strong political and social commitment to save the tigers, which resulted in the entire government machinery starting to work to find the factors working against the tiger conservation, resulting in the population doubling within ten years, and now we are approaching the figure of three times.
In this article I will try to explain how the tiger population has recovered and tripled since the first census. It will reveal the factors contributing to the tiger conservation and their population recovery.
When India’s Tigers Were in Trouble
Some conservationists believed that there were 40,000 tigers in India at the turn of the century. This population was distributed into all suitable habitats of tigers. From high up to the Himalayas to the sea level at mangroves in Sundarbans. This was the time when forest cover was much better than today with prey availability.
Later with the advancement of weapons and tiger body part demand in TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) the killing of tigers was became rampant, coupled with large scale habitat loss the population of tigers started decline and reach at the brink of extinction. This is the time when project tiger was started on 1st April 1973 with the support from WWF international. The project tiger was started initially with nine tiger reserves under its ambit. In later years the number of tiger reserves increases with more and more addition of new protected areas under the project tiger and tiger population also increased.
Project Tiger: The Turning Point
Project Tiger was launched in year 1973 and it was a turning point in India’s journey of tiger conservation. Rather than concentrating just on the protection of individual tigers, the program adopted a landscape-level approach, building and strengthening protected areas where tigers might live and breed in safety.
It put more emphasis on forest protection, maintaining prey populations, fighting poaching and decreasing human pressure in vital tiger habitats. From an initial nine tiger reserves to a countrywide network of protected tiger landscapes. But the Project Tiger did not bring about an overnight recovery, but it did provide the framework for the subsequent impressive growth in India’s tiger population.
India Didn’t Just Protect Tigers—It Protected Their Forests
As mentioned earlier, the project tiger has adopted an ecosystem-level approach rather than focusing on protecting individual animals. This way, the tiger project not only protects the tiger but also its prey, co-predators, and habitat.
The protected forest means a healthy prey population, which further leads to a viable tiger population and a better functioning ecosystem. Several existing national parks and wildlife sanctuaries, and other conservation units with the presence of tigers, were declared as tiger reserves and provided better protection, monitoring, and management.
The idea of protecting tigers as an umbrella species helps us protect the whole forest, which includes tigers, leopards, bears, deer, monkeys, and all other flora and fauna, including water sources.
The Project Tiger Debacle
In the year 2005, the major setback to Project Tiger happened when we lost all the tigers from Sariska Tiger Reserve, which is the closest tiger reserve to Delhi, India’s capital. The tigers were poached by a gang operating in northern India. Then in Panna in 2008-09, all tigers became extinct; the reason is the same: poaching. These two incidents were a major setback to the Project Tiger and forced the forest authorities to rethink and redesign the tiger conservation strategy of India.
After tigers became locally extinct in these two tiger reserves, the Indian government created a tiger task force, and based on its recommendations, many steps have been taken, with the major shift being the transition of tiger conservation from small units of tiger reserves to landscape levels. Another step was to create a central authority that regulates the tiger reserves, known as the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA).
Larger landscapes are becoming capable of supporting the breeding tiger populations with no restrictions on their movement through wildlife corridors. These corridors help the tigers and other animals to move from one tiger reserve to another without any obstacle. Tigers need to move between forests, and isolated reserves cannot sustain healthy populations indefinitely.
Moving Tigers: When Tiger Conservation Meant Giving Nature a Helping Hand
The authorities have decided to take an unprecedented step for tigers following the Sariska and Panna debacle. It was decided to reintroduce the tigers in these two tiger reserves and source the founding population from similar kinds of landscapes, following IUCN guidelines for the reintroduction of large mammals. Reintroduction of large mammals has occurred in India before; some efforts, like the rhino reintroduction, were very successful, while others were not. This time the authorities didn’t want to leave any stone unturned.
They have taken every aspect of reintroduction into consideration and have taken help from scientists, veterinarians, protected area managers, local community, etc. There were some initial hiccups, but ultimately the reintroduced tigers settled and started breeding. Now both the reserves have a good tiger population as per the latest census.
India’s tiger recovery has involved both natural expansion and carefully planned human intervention.
Technology Changed the Way India Counts Tigers
Being a secretive animal by nature, tiger counting is always posing a challenge to scientists. Initially they were counted by the pugmark method, which was not a foolproof method. The Pugmark census requires a highly skilled person with several years of experience working with big cats, and there are still high chances of errors because a single tiger can produce different shapes and sizes of pugmarks on different substrata. The pugmark census was used to fool authorities about the tiger population by fudging records (or the fabrication of pugmarks), where local field staff manipulated or doubled-counted track data to show false increases or hide local extinctions.
One of the recommendations of the tiger task force was to conduct the census of tigers by using the advanced technology of camera traps. The first camera trap was conducted by WII (Wildlife Institute of India) and NTCA in 2006. The camera trap is a technology to count or monitor animals who are secretive in nature. These self-triggered cameras are two units installed on both sides of the forest road. These cameras use either laser beams or heat sensors, and when an animal passes in front of them, they capture a photograph of that animal.
Capturing photos of tigers from both flanks, researchers match them with other photographs to identify individual animals. The tiger stripes are unique, and no two tigers have similar stripe patterns, just like our fingerprints. The DNA extracted from scats is also a source of information for an individual tiger in case camera trapping is not possible in that area. After completing the exercise, all camera trap data is filled in on the computer, and after a statistical analysis of the data, the results are announced. This exercise was conducted every four years in India. The last census conducted in India in 2022 estimated that the tiger population in India was around 3,682.
The People Behind the Tiger Conservation Success
A tiger cannot survive simply because a forest is declared a protected area. Behind India’s tiger recovery are thousands of forest guards, field staff, scientists and local communities who work to protect forests and wildlife every day. In many tiger reserves, the relocation of villages from core critical tiger habitats allowed forests and wildlife to recover, while alternative livelihoods and compensation for livestock losses can help reduce the costs of living close to big cats like tigers and leopards. Local communities are also partners in conservation.
They get benefitted from employment and livelihoods generated through responsible wildlife tourism. When people living around tiger habitats, they get benefits from healthy forests and wildlife, tiger conservation becomes more than a government responsibility, it becomes a shared interest between communities and other bodies.
The future of the tiger depends not only on protecting forests, but also on ensuring that people living around those forests have reasons to support tiger conservation.
Wildlife Tourism: A Double-Edged Sword
Wildlife tourism can play an important role in tiger conservation when it is planned and managed responsibly. It creates employment for local guides, drivers, naturalists and hospitality workers, while generating income for communities living around protected areas. Tourism also brings people closer to nature and helps them understand why forests and wildlife need protection. However, tourism can become a pressure on wildlife when visitor numbers, vehicle movement or infrastructure are poorly managed.
The goal, therefore, should not simply be to bring more tourists into tiger habitats, but to promote responsible, low-impact tourism that benefits local communities, respects wildlife and contributes to the long-term protection of forests.
Why India Has Become the Tiger’s Global Stronghold
India’s incredible tiger recovery is not only attributed to a single programme or intervention. It is the result of decades of political commitment, the protection of forests through Project Tiger and tiger reserves, recovery of prey populations, strong anti-poaching measures and increased scientific monitoring. Wildlife corridors also have helped connect the fragmented habitats, while carefully planned translocations have restored tigers to some landscapes where they are locally extinct.
Involvement of local communities is equally important and the growing role of responsible wildlife tourism in generating livelihoods and support for tiger conservation. India did not save its tigers with one miracle. It built a tiger conservation system around them. That system has helped make India the world’s most important stronghold for wild tigers.
India did not save its tigers with one miracle. It built a tiger conservation system around them.
The Story Isn’t Over
The rise of tiger population from 1,411 tigers in 2006 to 3,682 in 2022 is one of the most extraordinary tiger conservation success stories of our time, but the story is far from over. As tiger numbers grow, the challenge of securing enough connected habitat for them to survive in the long term also grow. Protecting wildlife corridors, maintaining healthy prey populations, preventing poaching and managing human–wildlife conflict will become increasingly important. At the same time, India’s fast expanding highways, railways, towns and other infrastructure should be planned carefully to avoid fragmenting tiger habitats. Most importantly, conservation must continue to work for the people who share these landscapes with wildlife.
The future of India’s tiger will depend not only on how many tigers we have, but on how well we protect the ecosystems and communities that sustain them. India’s achievement is not simply about having more tigers. It is about keeping large, functioning ecosystems alive in one of the world’s most populous countries.
India’s tiger story is a story of recovery and responsibility. The comeback of the roar to many Indian forests shows us that wildlife can recover when governments, scientists, forest staff and communities work together. But keeping that roar alive will require the same commitment that brought the tiger back.
