Ullas, however, calls the methodology behind the findings “deeply flawed”, and adds that the government has prevented any outside scientific review of its data and analyses for the past 15 years. A paper published in November 2019 in Conservation Science and Practice also concludes that India’s tiger monitoring program is “unreliable”, suffers from “a lack of transparency” and that its results are “not backed by reliable scientific evidence”.

Nayak counters that the methods are sound, and that “a lot of people have been engaged in this process”, including three outside experts from the US, UK and Australia “who have already examined all the aspects and said that yes, we’ve been doing a wonderful job”.

James Nichols, an emeritus scientist at the United States Geological Survey who specialises in animal population dynamics and management, and who collaborated with Ullas for 25 years to develop tiger sampling methods, agrees that the raw data and methodological details that the government used to arrive at its findings “should be published somewhere to permit scrutiny by methodological experts”.

So while “India has done far more and far better with tigers than any other country”, Ullas says, he believes the picture on the ground is less rosy than politicians would lead the public to believe. “We’ve yet to achieve our full potential.”

India, he continues, is at a cross-road. It can resign itself to a small, limited number of big cats, or it can become one of the world’s most stunning conservation success stories by allowing its tiger population to grow to 10,000 or even 15,000 animals. The country has the money needed to realise this dream, and as ever more people choose to move from the countryside into cities, it also has the space.

For now, however, this is not a governmental goal. “I think the [tiger] numbers can increase, but to what extent is very difficult to say at this time,” Nayak says. “We have 2,900 tigers – and increasing – but we still have a lot of difficulties with tigers straying into human-dominated landscapes in certain parts of India and creating a lot of problems.”

India is one of the world’s most biologically diverse nations, but it sets aside less than 5% of its land for wildlife – compared to the 15% set aside by the US and China. Prakash Javadekar, India’s minister of environment, forest and climate change, did not respond to interview requests for this story.

Ullas questions whether the government has the political will to step up its conservation commitments. But while discouraging, he points to India’s past as proof that things can quickly and unexpectedly change for the good.

“I could have never predicted in the 1970s, when I saw the last tigers shot and paraded, that India would once again have wild tigers,” he says. “These things come in stages. Suddenly something will change, and when it does, we have so many things going in our favour.”

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Reporting for this story was supported by the Pulitzer Center.

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