IWN — International Tiger Day Special · 29 July 2026
International Tiger Day falls on 29 July, and IWN has been covering India’s tigers — their politics, their science, their losses, and their stories — since we began the journey of chronicling the Indian jungle and its wildlife. This is a curated roundup of IWN’s pieces that matter most, organised by theme, for anyone who wants to understand where India’s tigers stand today and how we got here.
The state of the tiger in 2026
The most current picture, published in the days before this Tiger Day:
- India’s Tiger and Leopard Toll So Far in 2026, Two Days Before International Tiger Day — A frank count of how many tigers India has lost in 2026, and to what causes, as the country prepares to mark the day.
- Before Tiger Day, Coimbatore Quietly Rewrote India’s Wildlife Rulebook — Published today: a significant policy development on the eve of Tiger Day that will shape how tiger habitat is managed for years.
- The Runaway Tigress of Similipal Has Four Cubs Now — Zeenat, the tigress whose long journey across Odisha generated headlines for months, has settled and raised a family. One of the year’s most satisfying wildlife stories.
- India’s 2026 Tiger Census Has a Different Question: Not How Many, But Where Can They Go? — The fifth All India Tiger Estimation is under way. The question it is trying to answer has shifted: not just population count but connectivity and movement.
- Spend a Night in the Jungle — and Help Count Tigers — How citizen participation is being woven into the 2026 census for the first time.
Disease, mortality, and what is killing India’s tigers
- Lab Results Confirm CDV Killed Five Kanha Tigers. Questions Now Turn to Prevention. — The confirmation of canine distemper virus as the cause of death for five Kanha tigers in April–May 2026 triggered national attention. What the NTCA did — and did not do — next is the story.
- Tigress T-141 and Four Cubs Die at Kanha in Suspected CDV Outbreak — The IWN report that broke the story as it unfolded.
- Babesia in Gir, CDV in Kanha: India’s Big Cats Are Facing Disease on Two Fronts — A wider lens on the disease threat to India’s big cat populations simultaneously.
- India’s Tigers and Leopards Face Mounting Mortality Crisis Even as Census Gets Under Way — The mortality picture at the start of 2026, from primary sources.
- NTCA Holds On-Ground Review at Bandhavgarh as India’s Tiger Death Toll Hits a Decade High — The moment the national picture came into focus.
Where tigers are — and where they’re going
- The Tiger Is Moving In — Not Just Passing Through — The growing evidence that tigers are establishing permanent territories outside protected areas. What that means for conservation and for people.
- Bengal Tiger Photographed for the First Time in Dibru Saikhowa National Park, Assam — A significant first record from a national park not previously known to hold tigers.
- When Three Worlds Collide: Tiger, Leopard and Cheetah in the Same Zone at Ranthambore — On the remarkable moment when all three big cats were recorded in the same landscape.
- Tigers Are Thriving in Balaghat’s Forests. The Prey Haven’t Kept Up. — A nuanced look at tiger success that complicates easy celebration: prey base recovery is lagging.
- The Mine and the Corridor: What Is Happening in Chandrapur’s Tiger Forests? — One of IWN’s most-read investigations: mining pressure on the Tadoba–Brahmapuri tiger corridor.
Conflict, policy, and the politics of living with tigers
- When the Forest Pushes Back — An unflinching look at the human cost of living at India’s forest edges, told through the incidents of early 2026.
- Karnataka’s Six-Month Tally: 15 Tigers, 13 Leopards, 8 Elephants, 19 Humans Dead as Conflict Escalates — The numbers that define the scale of the challenge in India’s most biodiverse state.
- Karnataka Bans Open-Jeep Wildlife Safaris Across All Tiger Reserves and Sanctuaries — A significant and controversial policy shift that put Karnataka at the centre of the safari tourism debate.
- When the Gypsies Outnumber the Trees: India’s Safari Tourism Problem — The structural crisis in tiger safari management and what it is doing to the animals tourism is supposed to celebrate.
- Tourism Stress: New Study Finds Safari Zones Are Making Wild Tigers Anxious — The science behind what crowded safari zones do to tiger behaviour and physiology.
Tigers on screen — and in culture
- Jungle Stories: Indian Wildlife Documentaries — Tiger on Screen — Part 3 of IWN’s eight-part series on Indian wildlife multimedia: the documentary tradition built around the Bengal tiger, from Fateh Singh Rathore’s early films to the present day.
- Jungle Stories: Indian Wildlife on Screen — Regional and Independent Cinema — Sherni, Poacher, and the fiction films that have taken India’s tiger politics seriously.
- The Tiger at the Temple Gate — On the encounters between the sacred and the wild at the edge of Corbett.
The longer record: IWN on tigers since 2015
IWN’s tiger coverage goes back to the site’s founding. A selection from the archive:
- Tiger FAQs — IWN’s foundational explainer on India’s tiger: biology, behaviour, the census methodology, and the basics of tiger conservation. Still one of the site’s most-read pieces.
- India Losing a Tiger Every Five Days — The 2015 mortality alarm that set the tone for a decade of coverage.
- ThumbsUpFor Tigers on World Tiger Day — IWN’s 2016 Tiger Day post: the first time the site marked the day with a dedicated piece.
- Corbett Tiger Reserve’s Newest Resident — One of IWN’s most-loved posts: a cub arrives.
- Climate Change Threatens Sundarbans and Its Iconic Residents — The Sundarbans tiger under climate pressure: a story that has only grown more urgent since 2019.
The government makes its case
A day before this Tiger Day, the Press Information Bureau published its own backgrounder on the state of the Indian tiger — part scorecard, part diplomatic résumé. IWN went looking for the numbers behind the numbers.
- India Leads the Wilderness in Tiger Conservation — PIB’s own account: nearly 70% of the world’s wild tigers, a governance architecture built on Project Tiger and the NTCA, and a growing web of international partnerships from the International Big Cat Alliance to the Global Tiger Forum.
- The government’s global figure of roughly 5,711 wild tigers sits at the high end of what others report — the Global Tiger Forum put the count at 5,574 in 2023, and the IUCN’s most recent Red List assessment was more cautious still, at 3,726 to 5,578. Inside India, the anchor number remains undisputed: 3,682 tigers, per the All India Tiger Estimation (2022).
This roundup will be updated as IWN publishes more tiger coverage. If there is a post we should have included, write to us.
International Tiger Day is observed on 29 July each year. It was established at the Saint Petersburg Tiger Summit in 2010, where thirteen tiger-range nations committed to doubling wild tiger populations by 2022 — a goal India came close to meeting.