Rethinking conservation: Why India’s approach to conserving tigers is essentially flawed

This is the third of a 4-part series. Read the first, second and fourth parts.

Broadly, India’s tiger conservation has focused on increasing tiger numbers by creating protected areas, launching conservation projects, encouraging tourism activities to improve funds and awareness, and relocating tigers when their numbers rise beyond the carrying capacity of the reserve. Dharmendra Khandal, a conse-rvation biologist with Ranthambore-based non-profit Tiger Watch, says that an approach focused on tiger numbers is not correct. He argues that there is a need to accept that habitat for tigers cannot be increased in the proportion of their rising population.

“Almost 50 per cent of the tiger reserves have been declared in the past decade alone, but where are the tigers in them?” says Khandal. “Status of Tigers, co-predators and prey in India-2022” also shows that there are 18 tiger reserves with fewer than 10 tigers within their administrative boundaries. These includes 13 reserves with less than 10 tigers and five reserves with zero tigers. “These facts question the official narrative that people need to be relocated from tiger habitats to thrive,” says Ravi Chellam, a wildlife biologist and conservation scientist based in Bengaluru.

The 2025 Science study states that the boom in tiger population has also been accompanied by local extinctions of tiger population in 17,992 sq km between 2006 and 2018, mainly due to isolation of protected areas, increased urbanisation, infrastructure development and high incidences of armed conflicts. These include tiger reserves such as Palamau, Udanti-Sitanadi, Similipal, Satkosia and Indravati. These reserves have the potential to regain tiger populations but face some of the lowest prey numbers, as per the 2022 NTCA report. Low prey abundance is often linked to “traditional dependence on bushmeat consumption” or high anthro-pogenic “biotic pressure”. For instance, Palamau Tiger Reserve in Jharkhand faces critically low tiger numbers that are functionally extinct and requires “prey restoration”, says the report. Since many of these reserves are located in some of the poorest districts in India, they also have high incidences of bushmeat consumption, often with the use of traps and snares that usually kill preys indiscriminately.

“It is unfortunate that the importance of tiger reserves—which are increasingly being valued primarily for tourism purposes—is being recognised, while many ecologically important non-tourism tiger reserves are being neglected. The condition of most reserve landscapes and wildlife corridors is steadily deteriorating. More than 50 per cent of tiger reserves across the country are receiving little attention, particularly in terms of restoring wildlife corridors, facilitating the movement of tigers between different reserves, and ensuring the long-term expansion and recovery of tiger populations,” says Khandal. Most conservationists and forest officials agree on the need for a new conservation framework and say that relocating tigers from one reserve to another is not an ideal solution.

This article was originally published as part of the cover story Rethinking Conservation in the June 1-15, 2026 print edition of Down To Earth