Evaluate the role of the NTCA and Project Tiger in India's tiger recovery.

Project Tiger (1973) and the National Tiger Conservation Authority — given statutory status by the 2006 amendment to the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 [1] — anchor India's tiger governance. Judged by numbers the record is a clear success; judged by spread, it remains uneven.

Achievements

• Population recovery: 3,682 tigers in the 2022 estimation, against 2,967 (2018) and 2,226 (2014), growing about 6% annually in consistently sampled areas [2] — roughly three-fourths of the world's wild tigers.
• Institutional and financial architecture: 58 tiger reserves notified over nearly 2.5% of India's geographical area, funded under the Project Tiger component of the Centrally Sponsored Scheme for Integrated Development of Wildlife Habitats [2].
• Science-led monitoring: the quadrennial All India Tiger Estimation using camera traps and spatially explicit capture–recapture [3]; the 5th Management Effectiveness Evaluation cycle rated 51 reserves, with 12 'Excellent' and 21 'Very Good' [4].
• Standardised field response: NTCA SOPs for orphaned/abandoned cubs and straying tigers give officials a written protocol for rescue and rewilding [5] — as in the recent release of a rescued cub from Biswanath into Kaziranga [6].
• Landscape thinking: 'Amrit Kaal Ka Vision for Tiger Conservation' shifts focus to landscape-level and sectoral convergence [4].

Limitations

• Skewed gains: increases concentrate in Central India and the Shivalik–Gangetic plains, while the Western Ghats recorded localised declines; occupancy rose only marginally, from 1,758 to 1,792 grid cells [3].
• Sink reserves: NTCA's own Roadmap for Active Management of Tigers admits many reserves need prey augmentation through translocation of gaur and barasingha, and even tiger reintroduction [7] — paper protection without an adequate prey base holds no tigers.
• Conflict externality: crowded source populations disperse through farmland, so entrapment in household nets and fences is now routine [6], with costs borne by fringe villagers.

Overall, Project Tiger and the NTCA have decisively reversed decline and built world-class monitoring; the unfinished task is converting protected space into productive habitat. Prey restoration in sink reserves, secured corridors and incentivised community reporting would extend this success, advancing SDG 15's commitment to halting biodiversity loss.