One way to encourage the flow of tigers (and therefore genes) across an unpredictable, human-filled landscape is to build wildlife corridors. Such corridors would re-connect populations which are genetically close, and were therefore most likely connected in the recent past.

Since the official estimates that established a 30 per cent increase in the wild tiger population were released in January, many conservationists have repeatedly raised concerns over the government of India’s capacity to manage the increased number of tigers.

With the increase in number of tigers in past four years in India, the tiger density in some of the reserves has surpassed their carrying capacity. Therefore, a good number of tigers have either dispersed or are reported to be living outside the reserves, often coming into conflicts with people or becoming easy targets for the poachers. 

The government so far did not have a strategy to look beyond the tiger reserves and manage the big cats at a landscape level. But now, with an aim to address this problem, the Indian government’s tiger authority (National Tiger Conservation Authority – NTCA) has come up with a set of guidelines to rehabilitate the tigers that are ‘dispersing’ from the densely populated source forests and bring them to suitable forests with low or no tiger density.

On March 18, the NTCA released a “Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for rehabilitation of tigers from source areas at the landscape level” and presented it to the Chief Wildlife Wardens of the tiger-range states and field directors of the tiger reserves. The SOP identifies the population clusters with surplus tigers across the country and suggests areas where they can be relocated. The process for relocation has also been mentioned.