Earlier this month, Madhav National Park in Shivpuri, Madhya Pradesh, was designated as a tiger reserve, increasing the number of such reserves in the nation to 58.
There are currently six tigers, including a cub, in the most recent tiger reserve, which covers 1,651 square kilometers. Since the Ranthambore-Kuno-Madhav National Park corridor has been identified as a prospective habitat for an expanding tiger population, it is hoped that the announcement of the new reserve will facilitate tiger migration within it.
Even though India’s indigenous elites had been hunting large game for thousands of years, the activity reached a previously unheard-of level during British rule. Big game hunting was popular among Indian elites and visitors even after independence. There were severe repercussions for tigers, the top predator in India’s jungles.
In the 1960s, there was a warning about the dwindling tiger populations, which were partly caused by the fast deforestation to make way for farmland. The Union government, led by Indira Gandhi, outlawed the export of tiger skins in 1969. In the same year, tigers were recognized as an endangered species and a resolution to halt their killing was voted at the historic 10th congress of the International Union for Conservation of Nature in Delhi. A task team led by Karan Singh, the chairman of the Indian Board for Wildlife, was also established by the government to handle the problem.
Project Tiger was launched in April 1973, shortly after the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972 was approved, thanks to the task force’s recommendations. This project was meant to last only for six years initially, but has continued to date. It was aimed at maintaining a viable population of tigers, and preserving their habitat.
Manas (Assam), Jim Corbett (now in Uttarakhand), Kanha (Madhya Pradesh), Palamau (now in Jharkhand), Ranthambore (Rajasthan), Simlipal (Odisha), Melghat (Maharashtra), Bandipur (Karnataka), and the Sundarbans (West Bengal) were the nine tiger reserves when Project Tiger was first started. These reserves received funding through a centrally funded program and were announced in places that were already national parks.
According to Sunita Narain’s 2005 tiger task force report, “Joining the Dots,” the reserves were intended to establish a “core” where people could not move, graze, or fell, unless they were engaged in conservation efforts, and a “buffer zone” where human activity would be restricted. The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) was established as a statutory agency to supervise Project Tiger’s implementation following changes to the Wildlife Protection Act in 2005–06.
According to the most recent population estimate published in 2022–2023, there are an estimated 3,681 tigers (range 3167–3925) in India. According to the NTCA, the large cats cover an area of about 89,000 square kilometers. That is bigger than Austria and equal to the area of Jordan. Tigers can be found in the Sundarbans, the Central Indian Highlands and Eastern Ghats, the North Eastern Hills and Brahmaputra floodplains, the Shivalik Hills and Gangetic Plains, and the Western Ghats.
Corbett, with 260 tigers, boasts the largest population of the big cat followed by Bandipur (150), Nagarhole (141), Bandhavgarh (135), Dudhwa (135), Mudumalai (113), Kanha (105), Kaziranga (104), Sundarbans (100), Tadoba-Andhari (97), Sathyamangalam (85), and Pench (77). Among states, Madhya Pradesh with 785 has the biggest tiger population, followed by 563 in Karnataka, 560 in Uttarakhand, and 444 in Maharashtra.
A recent study published in the journal Science said that between 2006 and 2018, the area occupied by tigers has gone up by 30%, and more interestingly, some six crore people lived in around 45% of the area occupied by tigers. The study revealed that only 25% of the tiger habitats were in the core areas of tiger reserves, while buffer areas accounted for 20% of the big cat’s habitat.
Today, there are 26 tiger reserves with a population of more than 50 tigers. The density of tigers in the remaining 27 reserves is a cause for concern. According to the 2022 report, there were actually about 16 reserves with either no tigers, male-only populations, or less than five tigers. Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Telangana, and Odisha were the locations of these reserves.
The situation in Telangana, Odisha, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh is especially concerning because the tiger population there has either decreased, stayed the same, or even gone extinct locally, as is the case in Odisha’s Satkosia reserve. Poor socioeconomic conditions, a lack of political stability, insurgencies, the pressures of mining and development projects, and competition for forest resources were all factors in this predicament, according to study published in Science.
