Concerned over rising tiger deaths due to territorial fights and the dispersal of big cats into buffer areas and human-dominated landscapes, the Madhya Pradesh government has written to the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), seeking its scientific inputs to deal with the issue. Last year, the state lost 55 tigers and 112 leopards, the highest-ever annual tiger death count in MP since the launch of Project Tiger in 1973.
The All-India Tiger Estimation 2022 puts MP’s tiger population at 785, and the state currently manages nine tiger reserves (TRs). Among them, the source populations in Bandhavgarh, Pench and Kanha TRs are considered high-density. Several adjoining forest divisions are increasingly functioning as dispersal landscapes.
“Many deaths were due to intra-specific competition. There may be several ecological issues that are also of management concern. These dynamics highlight the need for a science-led reassessment of ecological carrying capacity and landscape-level population management mechanisms in central India, particularly in the tiger reserves of Madhya Pradesh,” the state’s principal chief conservator of forests and chief wildlife warden, Subharanjan Sen, wrote in a letter to the WII. He noted that observations and conflict records indicate density-driven dispersal is contributing to the movement of tigers and leopards into buffer areas, territorial forest divisions and human-dominated landscapes, thereby increasing incidents of human-wildlife conflict.
In light of the emerging concerns, the MP Forest department has sought scientific insights and evidence-based recommendations from the WII to assess the carrying capacity of high-density tiger reserves under current ecological conditions, considering prey biomass, habitat quality, space use and social structure. “While this (tiger population) reflects long-term success in protection, prey recovery and habitat management, emerging ecological signals suggest the onset of density-dependent processes, including increased intra- as well as inter-specific competition, displacement of sub-adults, altered space use and intensified inter-specific interactions with leopards,” the letter said.
The WII’s professional help and suggestions are expected to help MP evaluate the applicability and limitations of prey-based carrying capacity models, including the widely referenced Hayward et al. (2007) prey biomass–predator density relationship, from a practical wildlife management perspective in Indian tropical forest systems.
The state has also sought assistance in developing management-oriented indicators that can help field managers identify ecological saturation thresholds beyond which proactive interventions become critical.