“Tigers Outside Tiger Reserves” initiative targets the 35 to 40% of India’s tigers living outside protected areas

Why in the News

The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change’s (MoEFCC) new “Tigers Outside Tiger Reserves” (TOTR) initiative addresses the 35 to 40% of India’s tiger population living outside formally protected areas. It is built on two pillars, conflict reduction and community coexistence, across 40 forest divisions in nine states.

Pillars of the Tigers Outside Tiger Reserves (TOTR) initiative

1. Conflict reduction: The first pillar focuses on reducing human-tiger conflict incidents in forest divisions where tigers range outside the boundaries of formally notified reserves.
2. Community coexistence: The second pillar builds mechanisms for local communities to coexist with tigers present in shared, non-reserve landscapes, rather than treating their presence as purely a conservation enforcement problem.
3. Coverage: The initiative spans 40 forest divisions across nine states, reflecting the geographic spread of India’s tiger population beyond reserve boundaries.

Why does India need a policy specifically for tigers outside reserves?

1. Population share at stake: With 35 to 40% of India’s tiger population living outside protected areas, conservation policy focused only on reserve boundaries misses a large share of the actual tiger population.
2. Corridor dependence: Tigers outside reserves typically use forest corridors connecting reserves, and conflict in these corridors threatens the genetic connectivity between reserve populations.
3. Land use pressure: Non-reserve forest divisions face agricultural and settlement pressure that formally protected reserves do not, making conflict management here structurally harder than inside a reserve.

Conclusion

1. The Tigers Outside Tiger Reserves initiative extends India’s tiger conservation focus beyond reserve boundaries to the corridors and shared landscapes where a large share of the tiger population actually lives. Its success will depend on whether conflict reduction and community coexistence measures can be sustained in areas without a reserve’s formal protection status.

Back2Basics

1. Project Tiger: India’s tiger conservation programme launched in 1973 under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, currently covering 58 notified Tiger Reserves under the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA).