With most tigers confined to protected areas, can India's wildlife be truly self-sustaining? Suggest measures for landscape-level conservation.

India has about 70% of the world's wild tigers. Their number rose to 3,682 in 2022, growing at 6.1% a year [1]. Yet more than three-fourths of them live inside protected areas (PAs) [2]. The recovery is real, but it depends on management. It is not yet self-sustaining.

Why self-sufficiency remains elusive

• Island populations: Farms, roads and towns separate the reserves. Small, cut-off groups lose genetic diversity and risk inbreeding.
• Uneven recovery: The national growth comes from a few strong reserves. Others, like Buxa (West Bengal), needed tigers brought in from outside to restart a population.
• Dependence on intervention: NTCA had to reintroduce tigers into Sariska and Panna [3]. Lost populations rarely return without help.
• Spill-over conflict: Young tigers leave reserves and enter village land. Maharashtra alone reported 22 human deaths from tigers in the first half of 2024 [4]. Such deaths reduce local tolerance.

Why it remains achievable

• Steady growth in tiger numbers [1] shows that protecting habitat and prey works.
• Successful reintroductions [3] show that managed groups can become breeding populations.

Measures for landscape-level conservation

• Secure corridors: Protect the corridors that link reserves (e.g., Kanha–Pench). Build wildlife crossings like the NH-44 underpasses in the Pench landscape.
• Manage buffers, not just cores: Plan land use in buffer zones. Use EIA to route roads, rail lines and canals away from corridors.
• People as partners: Pay compensation quickly, keep rapid-response teams ready, and recognise rights under the Forest Rights Act, 2006, so that villages gain from coexistence.
• Genetic management: Bring founder tigers from different source populations, and track their genetics through institutions such as WII.
• Reintroduction discipline: Release tigers in phases, add prey first, and measure each step against IUCN reintroduction guidelines.
• Ecosystem approach: Protect prey, co-predators and grasslands, as the 2022 status report does by monitoring whole ecosystems [2].

India's tigers are thriving, but on islands that need constant guarding. The way forward is to intervene to restore connected, people-inclusive landscapes and then step back, so that populations can sustain themselves. This fulfils Article 48A, Article 51A(g) and SDG 15 (Life on Land).