29-07-2025
India: Tiger numbers rise, but risks remain – DW – 07/29/2025
July 29 is International Tiger Day. India has made progress in growing and stabilizing its tiger population, but the big cats still face serious threats that jeopardize their future.
India has the world's largest tiger population, home to over 3,600 wild tigers, which represent about 75% of the global wild tiger population, inhabiting an area of 138,200 square kilometers (53,360 square miles), according to the 2023 All-India Tiger Estimation Report, which contains figures from the country's most recent tiger census.
Indian Prime Minister Narandra Modi at the time emphasized the "responsibility of doing even more to protect the tiger as well as other animals."
But despite the healthy numbers, stabilizing and securing the future of tigers requires continued and complex efforts.
Deforestation, expansion of agriculture, urbanization, and infrastructure projects have increasingly fragmented tiger habitats. As a result, continuous tiger habitats have been divided into smaller patches — affecting their movement, breeding, and the availability of prey.
"Charismatic mammals are part of varied natural ecosystems and this unhealthy focus on the population size of large mammals has blinded us from the overall deterioration of functional natural ecosystems," wildlife conservationist Ravi Chellam told DW.
Chellam pointed out that it is not merely the size of habitats, but their quality that constrains tiger survival and recovery. Therefore, ensuring prey-rich, well-managed and protected habitats is key.
"Most ecosystems have been degraded by the phenomenal increase in the presence of invasive species, fragmented and even destroyed by numerous 'development' projects and with impacts of climate change being felt across the country," said Chellam.
India has 58 tiger reserves spread across 18 states. Of late, the fragmentation of tiger habitats has become severe in areas where forests overlap with expanding human settlements, agriculture, and infrastructure corridors.
For instance, the central Indian region is home to several major tiger reserves — including Kanha, Pench, Tadoba, Satpura and Bandhavgarh. However, roads, railways, mines, and agricultural expansion have fragmented the forests and isolated tiger populations.
Prominent corridors — such as those connecting the tiger reserves in Kanha and Pench, as well as Tadoba and Indravati — are under significant pressure. Sariska Tiger Reserve in the western Rajasthan corridor faces grave ecological risks from the government's move to address concerns about mining operations near Sariska.
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This change is intended to facilitate the reopening of more than 50 marble, dolomite, limestone, and masonry stone mines that were previously shut down by a Supreme Court order due to their proximity to core tiger habitats.
The proposed plan to redraw the boundaries of the Sariska Tiger Reserve shall remove over 4,800 hectares from the critical tiger habitat, according to a digital campaigning organization.
"This reduction threatens vital wildlife corridors that are crucial for tiger movement, seasonal refuge, and territorial establishment," said the group.
Similarly, the Sundarbans mangrove forest spreading across parts of Bangladesh and the eastern state of West Bengal is one of the largest reserves for the Bengal tiger. But rising sea levels and coastal erosion are destroying the tigers' natural habitat.
Yadvendradev Jhala, a prominent wildlife scientist and former dean at the Wildlife Institute of India, said that India has monitored the distribution and profusion of tigers every four years since 2006.
India has now adopted modern techniques such as camera trapping, genetic analysis, and the Monitoring System for Tigers: Intensive Protection and Ecological Status (M-STrIPES) to assist effective patrolling, assess ecological status and mitigate human-wildlife conflict in and around tiger reserves.
"We found that tigers would persist in protected habitats with ample prey, while becoming extinct in areas of increased human and social disturbances," Jhala told DW.
Tiger habitats in the states of Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and eastern Maharashtra have been affected by ongoing armed insurgencies. These conflict zones coincide with areas where tiger occupancy is low and the probability of local extinction is high, according to a study published in .
"These are areas where with greater political stability, we might expect tiger recovery," he added.
While surveying tiger habitats, Jhala and his team found that tigers shared space with people at high densities in some areas such as Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, and Karnataka.
However, they became extinct or were absent from areas with a legacy of extensive bushmeat consumption or commercial poaching, even when human density was relatively low such as in the states of Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.
"Thus, it is not simply the density of humans but rather their attitudes and lifestyles that determine stewardship for tiger recovery," said Jhala, emphasizing that adopting an inclusive and sustainable rural prosperity in place of an intensive land-use, change–driven economy can be conducive for tiger recovery.
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Subbiah Nallamuthu, a leading wildlife filmmaker, who has made significant contributions to conservation efforts, particularly through his work documenting the lives of tigers, told DW that there is a hidden danger behind the rising tiger numbers.
In a healthy tiger landscape, wildlife scientists say the ideal sex ratio should be one adult male for every two to three adult females (1:2 or 1:3). This is based on natural tiger behavior and territory needs.
"In many tiger reserves, especially Ranthambhore, the male-to-female ratio is now close to 1:1 with equal numbers of adult males and females. In some areas, male numbers are even higher," said Nallamuthu.
From his experience documenting tigers, Nallamuthu points out that this imbalance happens because of limited space, fragmented corridors, and tourism pressure.
"Conservation is no longer just about saving a species. It is about saving its way of life. If we ignore sex ratios and territorial needs, we may have tigers in numbers, but not in balance," Nallamuthu said.
"A forest full of conflict is not a healthy forest. On this International Tiger Day, we must shift focus from just celebrating numbers to understanding what tigers truly need to thrive."
