Tiger triumph and the fragile truth

India’s tiger story has long been framed as a rare conservation success. Under the stewardship of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), populations have rebounded, reserves have expanded, and the country today hosts nearly three-fourths of the world’s wild tigers. But beneath that success lies a quieter crisis — one that cannot be solved by administrative shortcuts.

A recent move by the NTCA to close unresolved tiger death cases if states fail to meet investigation deadlines risks doing precisely that: replacing accountability with paperwork compliance.

At first glance, the logic appears bureaucratically sound — pending cases clog systems and deadlines impose discipline. But wildlife mortality investigations are not routine files; they are complex, evidence-sensitive processes requiring forensic rigour, field verification, and inter-agency coordination.

When dozens of tiger deaths remain unexplained due to missing necropsies, incomplete forensic reports, or delayed field inquiries, the problem is not delay alone — it is systemic failure. Closing such cases without determining the cause of death is not efficiency; it is erasure.

This concern is no longer abstract. Documents obtained under the Right to Information Act by wildlife activist Ajay Dubey reveal that at least 88 tiger mortality cases from 2020-2021 remain ‘pending’ or ‘under scrutiny’, spanning some of India’s most critical tiger landscapes.

In Madhya Pradesh alone, the backlog includes cases from key breeding strongholds such as Bandhavgarh, Kanha, and Panna Tiger Reserves. In Maharashtra, unresolved cases from Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve and Chandrapur signal risks in buffer landscapes, while even Kaziranga National Park in Assam has unexplained deaths dating back to 2020.

Similar gaps persist across Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, and Uttarakhand, including cases in Nagarhole Tiger Reserve, Dudhwa National Park, and Corbett Tiger Reserve — some marked as ‘seizures’, indicating poaching evidence without legal closure.

Five years on, many cases still lack basic evidentiary components — post-mortem reports, forensic analysis, histopathology, and photographic documentation — pointing to a breakdown of the investigative chain.

What makes the current proposal particularly troubling is that it contradicts the NTCA’s own prescribed process for analysing tiger mortality. Under its protocol, no death is recorded without state confirmation. All cases must follow SOPs under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, and the burden of proving the cause of death rests with the state through scientific evidence, after which the NTCA assigns the final cause.

The system is built on a precautionary principle: in the absence of conclusive evidence, a tiger death is to be treated as poaching. But what purpose does that safeguard serve if cases are ultimately closed without a logical conclusion? The presumption of crime means little if it is never followed through with investigations.

This safeguard exists because wildlife crime is often concealed and evidence is fragile. By defaulting uncertainty to suspicion, the framework errs on the side of protection. The proposed closure policy inverts that logic — if cases are shut due to missing reports, absence of evidence becomes grounds for disposal, shifting the burden from the state to the tiger.

As Ajay Dubey puts it, “By force-closing these files, the NTCA is effectively scrubbing potential poaching incidents and management failures from the national record.” 

Crucially, this institutional weakness was anticipated nearly a decade ago. The National Wildlife Action Plan (2017-2031), issued by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, had already called for strengthening investigation capacity, improving forensic infrastructure, and ensuring faster prosecution of wildlife crimes.

It emphasised training frontline staff in evidence collection, establishing a network of advanced wildlife forensic laboratories by upgrading existing facilities, and creating fast-track judicial mechanisms within defined timelines — yet much of this remains unimplemented.

The NTCA’s January 2026 communiqué, warning of closure if documents were not submitted within weeks, addresses none of these structural issues and instead risks institutionalising them. India’s conservation model depends on a balance between central oversight and state execution, but the present situation exposes weaknesses in both — states have failed to complete investigations, yet closure normalises that failure. 

Tiger conservation is not just about increasing numbers — it is about ecological integrity and public trust. A pending case signals a problem, while a closed case without findings conceals it. If the NTCA is serious about addressing its backlog, the focus must shift from tidying records to fixing the system.

When a country that leads the world in tiger conservation cannot credibly explain how its flagship species is dying, it risks undermining the very foundation of its success story. Most importantly, the foundational principle must remain intact: every tiger death deserves a credible explanation. Closing files may reduce the backlog, but without fixing the system, future deaths risk remaining just as unexplained — and far more consequential.

When the cause of death is unknown, the cause of failure is not.

The writer is a wildlife conservationist.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)