The count goes on
India is counting its tigers again — but even as field surveyors fan out across 58 reserves for the sixth All India Tiger Estimation, the numbers coming in from another source are harder to celebrate.
According to the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI), which tracks big cat deaths in real time using data collated from the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), 46 tigers have already died in India in 2026 — 35 from natural causes and 11 from poaching and seizures. Leopard deaths are considerably higher: 166 animals lost so far this year, 122 from natural mortality and 44 linked to poaching or seizures.
Policy reckoning
These numbers land at a particularly pointed moment. Speaking at the Conference of Chief Wildlife Wardens of Tiger Range States and Field Directors of Tiger Reserves in Alwar, Rajasthan in February, Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav called for a comprehensive review of all policy decisions taken across 28 NTCA meetings since its founding. According to the Press Information Bureau (PIB), the Minister said this was an appropriate moment for a reckoning, and called for four regional working groups to assess zone-specific challenges in tiger conservation.
On the conference agenda: tiger population estimation under the 2026 census, rescue and rehabilitation infrastructure, human-wildlife conflict, and utilisation of the Tiger Reserve Fund. According to PIB, the Minister called for a standardised national framework for rescue and transit treatment centres around tiger reserves — a response to the growing frequency of tigers appearing outside core areas.
Vanishing vultures
A parallel crisis has been quietly documented in India’s skies. A pan-India assessment by scientists from the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), cited by the Wildlife Protection Society of India, found that vultures have vanished from nearly 72 per cent of their historically known nesting sites. The study — the first systematic nationwide effort covering four Critically Endangered resident species — warned that once vulture populations collapse at a site, natural recolonisation is often slow and uncertain.
Grounds for hope
On a more encouraging note, the Minister confirmed that India’s cheetah reintroduction programme at Kuno National Park has reached its third India-born generation. The International Big Cat Alliance (IBCA) now has 24 member countries, and India has announced the first-ever Global Big Cat Summit will be held in New Delhi later this year.
India’s conservation record remains, by global standards, genuinely impressive. The challenge it now faces is the one that comes after success: what to do when the animals thrive, but the systems built around them have not kept pace.
Sources: Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI) · Press Information Bureau (PIB) · National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) · Wildlife Institute of India (WII)