IWN Original Report — Monday, 27 July 2026

India marks International Tiger Day on Wednesday. Two days out, the running tally of this year’s big cat deaths tells its own story.

According to figures tracked by the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI), which compiles its mortality count from National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) data, India has recorded 131 tiger deaths so far in 2026 — 102 attributed to mortality and 29 to poaching or seizure cases. Leopards have fared worse in raw numbers: 334 deaths so far this year, 240 of them mortality and 94 poaching or seizure cases.

Against last year

For comparison, WPSI’s tally for the whole of 2025 stood at 212 tiger deaths (160 mortality, 52 poaching or seizure) and 542 leopard deaths (434 mortality, 108 poaching or seizure). With five months of 2026 still to run, this year’s tiger count already sits at well over half of last year’s full-year total, and the leopard count is on a similar trajectory.

WPSI does not publish a breakdown of natural versus human-caused deaths within its “mortality” category, and the figures are an in-year tally rather than a closed, audited annual count — cases can be reclassified as investigations conclude. NTCA has not yet published its own year-end reconciliation for 2026.

What the day marks

International Tiger Day traces back to the 2010 St Petersburg Tiger Summit, where the 13 tiger range countries — India among them — committed to doubling the global wild tiger population by 2022. India’s own tiger count has more than kept pace with that goal on paper, home to over 70 percent of the world’s wild tigers by the last official estimate. The mortality figures are the other half of that ledger: a reminder that a rising population count and a rising death count can climb together.

Sources: Wildlife Protection Society of India