Status of tigers in India 2022: summary report

In 1973, the Project Tiger was established with the objective of utilizing the tiger’s functional role and charisma to garner public support and resources for preserving representation ecosystems. Since its inception, the project has expanded from nine tiger reserves covering 18,278 km2 to 53 reserves covering 75,796 km2, which account for 2.3% of India’s land area. Despite this, most tiger reserves and protected areas in India are existing as small islands in a vast sea of ecologically unsustainable land use, and many tiger populations are confined to small protected areas. Although some habitat corridors exist that allow tiger movement between them, most of these habitats are not protected areas, continue to deteriorate further due to unsustainable human use and development projects, and thereby are not conducive to animal movement.