How many tigers can our forests hold? If the numbers keep increasing, can they be managed? With the government's prime focus being 'development', will forests become a casualty?

India's tiger population may have risen by 30 percent to an estimated 2,226 in the last five years but are India's forests well equipped to manage these rising numbers? With the government's prime focus being 'development', will the country's forests become a casualty? What about the man-animal conflict? It's definitely going to be a challenging task for the forest officials.

Qamar Qureshi of the Wildlife Institute of India, who has been involved with all the three tiger-counting exercises told Indian Express that some areas are already saturated which include the Corbett area, the Sunderbans and even the Western Ghats, while others are close to getting saturated.

According to experts, a manageable number that the forests can hold would be between 3,000 and 3,500.

Yadvendra Jhala, wildlife biologist at Dehradun's Wildlife Institute of India told Times of India that an infrastructure development is required to make space for these tigers.

"Most forest corridors today are degraded. Yet, studies have shown they are still being used by tigers to move from one protected forest to another. But any further degradation and they would become barriers," Jhala told Times of India.

According to the latest census report released, the total number of tigers were estimated to be around 1,706 in 2010, up from an alarming 1,411 in 2006 when the last such tiger-counting exercise was undertaken.

Releasing the country wide tiger assessment report for 2014, Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar termed it as a "success story" and noted that while the tiger population is falling in the world, it is rising in India. " 70 percent of the world's tigers are now in India. We have the world's best managed tiger reserves," Javadekar said.

But, there's a possibility that the 'success story' may turn into a nightmare in the absence of smart infrastructure development that's sensitive to forests and wildlife.

The human-animal conflict is a big challenge.

Anish Andheria, president of the Wildlife Conservation Trust in Mumbai told Scroll that 50 years ago, a tiger could easily move 700 kilometres in search of new territory but it's no longer easy for the animals. "Now our parks are on average 1,000 square kilometres, which is nothing really," he said.

The National Tiger Conservation Authority has estimated that there were 66 tiger deaths in 2014. Of the total tiger deaths, five died of disease or old age and four were confirmed to have been killed by humans.

According to a ToI report, in the last 21 months, 95 persons died in human-animal conflicts.

"Of these 40 deaths, 30 persons were victims of elephants, four each of tigers and leopards, two of bears and one each of bison and wild pigs. During the same period, 61 persons suffered various injuries and three others were left with permanent disabilities. Wild animals also killed 468 heads of cattle in the same period and 8,018 cases of crop damage were reported," noted the report.

On Monday, talking about human-animal conflict, the Environment Minister said that "proactive" steps will be taken in this regard. "We must ensure the animal-human conflict does not happen. We have proactively decided that we will create more grasslands and water storage in forest areas so that animals can live well," he said.

"We have to avoid this...If we put all deaths of human-animal conflict, it becomes 300 and more which means we are losing one person per day and that should not happen. We are taking new initiatives," he told reporters.