India scrambles to set up new tiger reserves as big cat population booms

India’s wild tiger population has doubled in just over a decade, cementing its status as the global stronghold for the species. But with this success comes an urgent challenge – given their famously large ranges, where will all these big cats live?

At least one aspect of India’s answer comes in the form of new tiger reserves, with the government rapidly expanding its network of protected areas. Three new national parks have been established in just the last five months, taking the country’s total to 58. They house 3,682 tigers, according to the most recent census in 2022, up from 1,706 in 2010.

In theory that means an average of 63 tigers per park. But the problem for India’s forest officials is that their distribution is not even – the newest reserve, named earlier this month as Madhav National Park in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, was home to no tigers at all up until 2023.

That changed with human intervention – the relocation of three tigers, which led to the birth of two cubs in the forest, reported India Today. In March, another tiger was introduced, strengthening the area’s credentials as a potentially vital wildlife corridor linking the more famous and established reserves of Ranthambore, Kuno, and Panna.

While India’s conservation efforts have generally been praised, experts warn that protecting tigers is not just about increasing numbers. More than 60 million people live in areas overlapping tiger habitats, leading to growing concerns about human-wildlife conflict.

open image in gallery

At the same time, some reserves – especially in the eastern regions of Odisha, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh – struggle with critically low tiger populations. Conservationists believe these regions could double their tiger numbers with better protection, cooperation with local residents and stricter anti-poaching measures.

As India’s tigers multiply, officials will face growing challenges – not just to count them, but to ensure they have enough space to survive, explains Milind Pariwakam, wildlife biologist and joint director at the Wildlife Trust of India. “What matters is the location of the tiger reserve, the unique habitat type it protects,” he tells The Independent.

Dr Medha Nayak, a conservation sociologist at the National Institute of Technology in Odisha, explains the importance of Madhav National Park’s addition to the list of tiger reserves in the country. “Madhav Tiger Reserve forms part of the Kuno landscape,” she says. “It will facilitate wildlife movement from Kuno, Madhav and Panna. Moreover, it shall also provide connectivity to the tigers of Ranthambore in Rajasthan which is not very far, geographically,” she says, referring to the popular tiger reserve in the adjoining north-western state.

“Madhav Tiger Reserve is not only about securing a good habitat but also ensuring a corridor for secured wildlife movement,” she says.

India’s tiger conservation efforts have come a long way since 1973 when Project Tiger was launched to counteract the alarming decline in tiger numbers due to rampant hunting and deforestation.

The initiative initially covered just nine reserves, but over the years the number has expanded to include diverse landscapes from the Shivalik Hills in the Himalayas to the mangrove forests of the Sundarbans.

open image in gallery

While tigers can be found in areas outside these legally protected zones, they only thrive in large numbers near or within them, according to conservationists in the most recent 2022 Status of Tigers report for the National Tiger Conservation Authority of India.

These high-density tiger populations play a crucial role in maintaining the species by producing young tigers that then spread across the landscape, wrote the authors of the paper Qamar Qureshi, Yadvendradev V Jhala, Satya P Yadav and Amit Mallick. This movement helps connect different tiger populations, which is vital for their survival by ensuring genetic diversity and stable numbers.

Madhya Pradesh leads India’s states in terms of tiger population, boasting 785 of the big cats within its nine reserves, according to the latest government figures. Other states with significant tiger populations including the southern state of Karnataka on 563 and Maharashtra with 444. The Himalayan state of Uttarakhand has 560 tigers, with Jim Corbett Tiger Reserve – named after an Anglo-Indian hunter and author born in India in 1875 – holding the largest single population with 260.

But not all states or reserves have seen such success, and 16 national parks are rated as being on the verge of local extinction, according to The Indian Express.

“While overall numbers have gone up, tiger abundance and occupancy remains a concern in large parts of our forest network,” says Mr Pariwakam.

“Areas such as North and Western Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha have very low densities of tigers. These forests can easily help double the tiger numbers in the Central Indian and Eastern Ghats Landscape with no negative implications such as human-wildlife conflict,” he says.

“Even if these three states can harbour one tiger per 100 sqkm, which is a very low density, they can pack 1400 tigers in the forests available.”

But the states need to focus on strengthening surveillance, as he highlights “illegal hunting, forest fires, overall lack of protection and patrolling” as the major challenges in these areas.

India’s economic prosperity and social conditions play a crucial role in determining where tigers can thrive, research has revealed. While some states support high densities of tigers coexisting with human populations, others have seen their big cat populations dwindle due to poverty, poaching, and habitat loss.

The study, Tiger Recovery Amid People and Poverty, published in the journal Science in January 2025, found that states such as Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, and Karnataka host significant tiger populations alongside human settlements. However, in regions like Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and northeast India – areas that include some of the nation’s poorest districts, where bushmeat hunting and poaching have historically been prevalent – tigers are either absent or extinct.

The authors suggest that economic prosperity, particularly in regions benefiting from tiger-related tourism and government compensation schemes for human-wildlife conflict, has contributed to better tiger conservation outcomes. However, they warn that development can also lead to land-use changes that harm tiger habitats.

“Tiger recovery is thus constrained at opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum, by intensive urbanisation and poverty,” the study states. “Hence, adopting an inclusive and sustainable rural prosperity in place of an intensive land-use change–driven economy can be conducive for tiger recovery, aligning with India’s modern environmentalism and sustainability.”