By the middle of January 2005, it became public that there were no tigers left in Sariska ti-ger reserve in north-eastern Rajasthan. It was the Indian national daily – “Indian Express” – that first broke this news. Incidentally, this is the same newspaper, that had over a decade earlier broken the news about the Second…

The period between early 1990s (after the Second Tiger Crisis) and early 2000s was “by and large” a stable time for tigers in the Project Tiger Reserves. However, during this time tigers of a few reserves, particularly the ones that had insurgency and naxalite problem, such as Manas, Valmiki, Namdapha etc. got decimated. Besides the…

The Project Tiger had a very successful run from its inception to the late 1980s. However, after the heady early year, when the Project Tiger was a great success and it was clear that the tiger population was recovering, the project fell into widespread complacency until, in the early 1990s, tigers disappeared in the famous…

It is estimated that there were nearly 40,000 tigers in the wild in India in 1900. Even if we consider this to be a slight exaggeration there were still a lot of tigers in India at that time. Today, according to the Government there are 3500 tigers but in reality there are less than 2000…