Wildlife is not limited to forests—it is found across wetlands, river systems, grasslands, deserts, and coastal zones.
Credit: PTI Photo
As India celebrates its 71st National Wildlife Week (October 2-8), established to raise awareness about conservation, it is a fitting time to assess our progress. Our record is a mix of remarkable successes and persistent, systemic failures that threaten the very ecosystems we strive to protect.
India’s forests cover about 76 million hectares out of 329 million hectares of land. Wildlife is not limited to forests—it is found across wetlands, river systems, grasslands, deserts, and coastal zones. To protect this diversity, the government has established 573 wildlife sanctuaries, covering 12.37 million hectares, and 107 national parks, which extend over 4.44 million hectares. The remaining 59 million hectares of natural forests, though not under formal protection, also hold rich wildlife populations. Forests and wildlife share a symbiotic relationship; neither can be sustained without the other.
The State of Forest Report 2023 estimates India’s forests store 7.2 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, up from 6.6 gigatonnes in 2015. Yet, India’s Paris Climate Agreement commitment to create a carbon sink of 2.5–3 gigatonnes CO₂ equivalent by 2030 is not on track. The degradation of forests, worsened by encroachment and missing boundary demarcations such as the 58% unmarked pillars reported in Mussoorie, reduces their ability to sequester carbon. Land grabs and habitat loss threaten both climate goals and the survival of species.
Balancing conservation and conflicts
Tigers, India’s flagship species, remain central to conservation. Project Tiger, launched in 1973, marked its 50th year in 2023 at an international workshop inaugurated by the Prime Minister in Mysuru. Numbers that had once declined to below 1,000 in 2004 have since risen steadily: 1,411 in 2008, 1,706 in 2011, 2,226 in 2015, 2,967 in 2019, and 3,682 in 2023. While this recovery is commendable, the forest areas under tiger occupancy have shrunk across central India, Odisha, the Western Ghats, and the Northeast, pointing to a mismatch between growing tiger populations and shrinking ranges.
When tiger density exceeds the carrying capacity of available habitats, conflicts with humans rise. In the last five years, tigers have killed 395 people, including 15 in Karnataka. The inadequate restoration of habitats and wildlife corridors has worsened the situation. Recently, five tigers were poisoned in Karnataka’s MM Hills Sanctuary after anti-poaching staff went unpaid and community engagement was neglected. Such lapses underline the urgent need for state departments to improve vigilance, habitat management, and dialogue with local communities.
The elephant, with an estimated wild population of nearly 30,000 in India, presents an even larger conflict challenge. In the last five years, 2,853 people were killed in elephant encounters, including 160 in Karnataka. Assam, West Bengal, Odisha, and Chhattisgarh also reported high casualties. Karnataka, Assam, and West Bengal each hold approximately 6,000 elephants, while Jharkhand, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Uttarakhand, and Chhattisgarh collectively support around 12,000.
Elephants routinely migrate in search of food, shelter, and water. Expanding highways, rail lines, and incompatible cropping patterns on forest fringes increasingly force them into human settlements. Farmers, in retaliation, often electrify fields or fire weapons, killing elephants. Train collisions are also frequent in Odisha, Assam, Uttarakhand, and West Bengal.
While the Forest and Railway ministries have collaborated on measures such as speed restrictions and wildlife overpasses, these initiatives have yet to deliver consistent results. The use of captive elephants in noisy public processions or ceremonies remains another risk, as even trained animals can panic and cause fatalities.
Projects to save the endangered
Idnia’s wildlife policy has experimented with ambitious species recovery projects that go beyond tigers and elephants. In 2020, India initiated ‘Project Cheetah’ to reintroduce an extinct species through translocation from Namibia and South Africa to Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park. Since then, 17 cubs have been born in India, marking an early milestone. Although only the Iranian subspecies of the Asiatic cheetah survives in the wild today, the African cheetah has been establishing a foothold in Kuno. The recent release of female cheetah Dheera into the Gandhi Sagar Sanctuary is seen as a symbolic expansion.
To safeguard aquatic ecosystems, the government launched Project Dolphin, targeting both riverine and marine dolphin species. The Gangetic dolphin, in particular, has been recognised as an indicator of ecosystem health. Monitoring progress under Namami Gange depends heavily on tracking dolphin populations and river pollution across different stretches.
India has also drawn attention to fragile Himalayan landscapes through Project Snow Leopard. Over the past five years, the Wildlife Institute of India has monitored populations across high-mountain habitats, as snow leopards signal the ecological resilience of watersheds crucial to millions of downstream users. With glacial bursts and accelerated snowmelt increasingly impacting hilly regions, the conservation of high-altitude species has become as much a matter of climate adaptation as it is an ecological stewardship.
India’s wildlife achievements—rebounding tiger numbers, elephant protection programmes, and reintroduction of cheetahs—sit uncomfortably alongside continuing habitat degradation, rising human–wildlife conflict, and weak enforcement. As National Wildlife Week reminds us, conserving forests, species, and landscapes is no longer just an ecological obligation but a resilience strategy for a warming, insecure planet.
(The author is a retired Indian Forest Service official and a science communicator)