India’s tiger population tops 3,000, shows census

Last Updated11/04/2023

The 5th cycle of Tiger Census, an evaluation of tiger reserves in India released by the PM of India, has estimated the number of big cats in the country (interim figures) at 3,167 in 2022 (increased by 200 or 6.7% in the past four years).
The 2018 Tiger Census (released in 2019) had established the presence of 2,967 tigers in India.

After the Sariska Tiger Reserve debacle (2005, Rajasthan), where despite total local extinction of tigers, official records showed presence of substantial tigers based on the pugmark census.
This disaster prompted the PM of India to appoint the Tiger Task Force (TTF) with a mandate to develop a strategy for tiger conservation in India.
Besides recommending the creation of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), etc., the TTF also suggested a country wide monitoring of tigers and their ecosystems.
NTCA in collaboration with the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), has conducted a national assessment for the "Status of Tigers, Co-predators, Prey and their Habitat" every four years since then.
The first status assessment of 2006 was peer reviewed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

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Interim figures of Tigers in India released:
- After identifying individual tigers from camera-trapped photos, the WII uses the Spatially Explicit Capture-Recapture (SECR) method to estimate the range of tiger abundance.
- In the interim, the minimum estimated figure of 3,167 tigers is comparable with the lower limit of the range (2,603-3,346) estimated in 2018, implying a gain of over 500 tigers.
- The numbers of tigers in areas where tigers are present but not camera-trapped are yet to be extrapolated.
50 years of Project Tiger (1973)
- To mark this, the PM inaugurated the International Big Cat Alliance, the first of its kind in the country.
- Addressing the event, the PM noted that India is the largest tiger range country in the world.
- 75% of the world’s tiger population was in India and that the country had seen a 75% growth in the population of big cats over the last 10-12 years.