Conservation efforts double India's tiger population
February 14, 2025
Around three-quarters of the world's tigers now live in India, despite rapidly growing urbanization and human populations.
From 2010 to 2022, tigers in India more than doubled from an estimated 1,706 to nearly 3,700, according to a new study published in Science.
The improved situation for tiger populations is due to conservation and environmental protection methods safeguarding them from habitat loss and poaching.
Researchers believe it offers key lessons for other big cat conservation programs around the world.
"Creating human-free protected areas allowed tigers to establish breeding populations from which they dispersed to occupy multi-use forests," said lead author Yadvendradev Vikramsinh Jhala, a conservationist at the Wildlife Institute of India.
Between 2010 and 2022, India's tiger habitat grew by 30% — about 1,131 square miles (2,929 square kilometers) annually.
Tigers are now spread across 53,359 square miles (138,200 square kilometers) in India, an area about the size of England.
Can humans and tigers live side-by-side?
Indian conservationists survey tiger habitats every four years — monitoring the distribution of tigers, their prey and quality habitat.
Tigers have thrived in protected, prey-rich areas but have also adapted to land shared by nearly 60 million people living in farming communities and settlements outside tiger reserves and national parks.
The study found just a quarter of tiger population areas are prey-rich and protected. Nearly half of tiger habitats are shared with roughly 60 million people.
Wildlife conservationist Ravi Chellam said land sharing between humans and tigers is crucial for the future stability of tiger populations.
"There is an acceptance that large cats can survive and even thrive with people living there. There are challenges, but for the most part, people see the intrinsic values of functional ecosystems which includes tigers," said Chellam.
Some 56 people die annually from tiger attacks in India. But this is a small number compared to other causes of mortality (road accidents kill 150,000 Indians annually).
Jhala said the best model for coexistence between tigers and humans in the land they share requires three things:
- Make living with large carnivores profitable for local communities by sharing revenues, ecotourism and compensation.
- Removing problem and conflict-prone animals from human areas.
- Making changes, such as removing open toilets, ensuring people move in groups within forest areas, proper lighting and housing, and safe stables for livestock.
Other data suggests tiger habitats have shrunk
Arjun Gopalaswamy, an ecologist at Carnassials Global in Bengaluru, India, has been monitoring tiger populations for a decade. He said the study's findings contradict other data that shows natural tiger habitats have shrunk in recent years.
"Earlier reports suggest that tiger distribution areas were significantly smaller — 10,000 to 50,000 square kilometers smaller [between 2006 and 2018]," Gopalaswamy told DW.
"It is challenging to definitively say whether India's national tiger numbers have increased, decreased, or remained stable over the past two decades."
Falling tiger numbers are part of a trend due to hundreds of years of tiger hunting and habitat destruction, starting with colonial bounty programs that sought to clear animal predators.
Gopalaswamy said inconsistent findings have led to conflicting actions on the ground.
"For example, while the Science paper suggests that tigers are expanding into new habitats in India, managers are actively relocating tigers between reserves under the pretext of combating isolation," he said.
Gopalaswamy said more scientifically rigorous methods of data on tiger populations and habitats are needed for clearer conservation actions.
Edited by: Matthew Ward Agius
Primary source:
Tiger recovery amid people and poverty, published in the journal Science https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk4827