India’s wildlife authorities documented 182 tiger deaths in the wild in 2023, a 50 per cent increase over the previous year’s count with a confirmed cause of death unclear in the vast majority of the cases.

The Union environment ministry, responding earlier this week to a Lok Sabha question on tiger mortality in the country, listed 182 tiger deaths in 2023, a sharp increase over 121 deaths in 2022 and 127 deaths in 2021.

The Centre’s nationwide quadrennial tiger estimation exercises have shown a rising population over the last five cycles, the estimate increasing from 2,967 in 2018 to 3,682 in 2022. Wildlife scientists say the mortality counts would be expected to rise amid the overall population increase but the data suggest that poachers remain active.

Researchers also say the actual number of deaths would be likely higher given the difficulty in timely detection of wild animal deaths. Most carcasses are detected in various stages of decay and it is difficult to determine the exact cause of death, said Yadvendradev Jhala, a tiger specialist formerly with the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun.

“As long as tiger densities and numbers are stable or increasing, deaths should not be a concern,” Jhala told The Telegraph. “But poaching can wipe out (local) populations quickly and management should always be vigilant. Poached carcasses are rarely discovered since most body parts of tigers are taken away for sale outside India.”

Authorities were able to confirm the cause in only 25 (13.8 per cent) of the 182 tiger deaths in 2023 and poaching accounted for nearly half — 12 of the 25 deaths.

Madhya Pradesh accounted for 13 and Maharashtra 8 of the 32 confirmed tiger deaths from poaching over the 2021-2023 period. Poachers also claimed the lives of at least one tiger in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Kerala and Uttarakhand, and two tigers in Tamil Nadu in 2023.

India’s tiger conservation project launched in 1972-73 seeks to protect tigers through so-called reserves marked by core areas in forests that are off limits for humans, albeit unfenced.

The ministry on Tuesday named the Ratapani wildlife sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh as the country’s 57thtiger reserve.

But with rising populations of both tigers and humans the chances of their paths intersecting has steadily increased. Wildlife scientists remain concerned about what they described two years ago as a “rising tide” of tiger poaching in India.

Zoologists in Udhagamandalam, Tamil Nadu, who analysed seizures of tiger parts — skin, claws, bones and teeth — had noted that the intensity of seizure rates was “very high” in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Assam.

Ravindranathanpillai Sanil and his colleagues said their analysis predicts four trade routes for the export of seized tiger body parts — the Nepal-Bhutan border, Assam border, Brahmaputra and the Mumbai port. They also flagged high seizure rates along the Western Ghats.

“Current approaches are incapable of resolving the issue and precise and effective forensic procedures… at the local level are critical for precisely tracing the trade channels,” Sanil and his colleagues wrote in a study describing their findings in Geojournal, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.