Discuss the institutional and inter-state coordination challenges in landscape-level tiger conservation in India.

Tigers move across landscapes and ignore reserve boundaries. In 2026 "Dooars Rani", a tigress moved from Valmiki (Bihar) to Buxa (West Bengal), strayed into Raimona NP (Assam) within about three weeks. She had to be tranquillised and brought back [1]. The case shows that India's model, built around single reserves run by states, struggles when conservation has to work across a whole landscape.

Institutional challenges

• Weak pre-release science: NTCA called long ago for a translocation protocol that includes a prior site assessment [2]. Even so, Buxa's low wild-prey base had already been flagged in the 2022 leopard status assessment, years before the release [3].
• Oversight without enforcement power: The NTCA (Sec. 38L, WLPA 1972) approves and guides. But prey recovery, protection and staffing are left to state forest departments. Buxa's reintroduction was approved in 2017 but carried out only in 2026 [1].
• Capacity gaps: Too few frontline staff limits radio-tracking and quick response after a release.
• Competing pressures: Adding prey must allow for a growing leopard population [3]. Moving villages out of the core must stay voluntary under the WLPA and the Forest Rights Act, 2006, so habitat consolidation is slow.
• Root causes left unaddressed: Poaching wiped out Sariska's tigers, and it was restocked from Ranthambhore only later [4]. The cause of local extinction has to be fixed before restocking.

Inter-state coordination challenges

• Split jurisdiction: One tigress involved three states: the source, the recipient and the state she strayed into [1]. Each has its own budget, capture authority and liability.
• Ad hoc rescue: The Raimona recapture depended on case-by-case coordination between West Bengal and Assam, with no standing protocol [1].
• Spillover at the source: Valmiki's growing tiger population has spread into Sohagibarwa WLS in Uttar Pradesh [5]. This creates conflict that no single state owns.
• Corridors across borders: The Buxa–Manas and Valmiki–Chitwan landscapes also need cooperation with Bhutan and Nepal.

Way forward

• Make site readiness (prey density, staffing, core status) a binding NTCA condition before any release [2].
• Sign landscape MoUs on tracking, capture authority and cost-sharing, run by joint landscape committees.
• Release breeding groups rather than lone females, as the Panna recovery showed [6].

Sariska and Panna prove that lost tiger populations can be restored [6]. India should plan around landscapes rather than single reserves, through cooperative federalism and a stronger NTCA. That would make releases like Buxa's last, in line with Article 48A and SDG 15.