By Aakriti tyagi
Project Tiger is a wildlife conservation movement initiated in India to protect the endangered tiger. The project was initiated in 1973 by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change of the Government of India. As of March 2025, there are 58 protected areas that have been designated as tiger reserves under the project. As of 2022, there were 3,682 wild tigers in India, which is almost 75% of the world's wild tiger population.
Population of tiger
During the tiger census of 2006, a new methodology was used extrapolating site-specific densities of tigers, their co-predators and prey derived from camera trap and sign surveys using GIS. Based on the result of these surveys, the total tiger population was estimated at 1,411 individuals ranging from 1,165 to 1,657 adult and sub-adult tigers of more than 1.5 years of age.[7][8] The 2010 National Tiger Assessment estimated the total population of wild tigers in India at 1,706. As per Ministry of Environment and Forests, the wild tiger population in India stood at 2,226 in 2014 with an increase of 30.5% since the 2010 estimate.[9]
In 2018, according to the National Tiger Conservation Authority, there were an estimated 2,603–3,346 wild tigers with an average of 2,967 in existence in India.[10] The wild tiger population increased to 3,682 as of 2022.[11] As India is home to majority of the global wild tiger population, the increase in population of tigers in India played a major role in driving up global populations as well; the number of wild tigers globally rose from 3,159 in 2010 to 3,890 in 2016 according to the World Wide Fund and Global Tiger Forum
Management and administration of tigers
Project Tiger is headed by an additional director general (ADG) based at New Delhi with regional offices at Bangalore, Guwahati and Nagpur.[1] The wildlife habitats that fall under Project Tiger are categorized into different conservation units: Shivalik-Terai, North East, Sunderbans, Western ghats, Eastern ghats, Central India and Sariska.[13]
Function under the ambit of Project Tiger include protection of tiger habitats, daily monitoring, facilitating ecological development for local people in the buffer zones, voluntary relocation of people from core/critical tiger habitats and addressing human-wildlife conflicts. As a part of the project, state are provided assistance on curtailing poaching activities such as disseminating information on poachers, assisting in combing forest floor to check for traps and other anti-poaching activities, maintaining tiger database, providing grants and training for deployment of Special Tiger Protection Force.[14]
Wireless communication systems, infrared thermal cameras and monitoring systems have been developed within the tiger reserves to assist in patrol activity
How changes occur
Project Tiger is headed by an additional director general (ADG) based at New Delhi with regional offices at Bangalore, Guwahati and Nagpur.[1] The wildlife habitats that fall under Project Tiger are categorized into different conservation units: Shivalik-Terai, North East, Sunderbans, Western ghats, Eastern ghats, Central India and Sariska.[13]
Function under the ambit of Project Tiger include protection of tiger habitats, daily monitoring, facilitating ecological development for local people in the buffer zones, voluntary relocation of people from core/critical tiger habitats and addressing human-wildlife conflicts. As a part of the project, state are provided assistance on curtailing poaching activities such as disseminating information on poachers, assisting in combing forest floor to check for traps and other anti-poaching activities, maintaining tiger database, providing grants and training for deployment of Special Tiger Protection Force.[14]
Wireless communication systems, infrared thermal cameras and monitoring systems have been developed within the tiger reserves to assist i
n patrol activities.