India’s newest tiger initiative—TOTR (Tigers Outside Tiger Reserves)—marks a long-overdue evolution in conservation thinking. For decades, tiger policy was defined by fences, reserves, and buffer zones. Now, the government is finally acknowledging a simple truth: tigers do not read boundary maps. They move, migrate, and survive across a living landscape that extends far beyond 58 protected reserves.
Launched on October 6 by Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav at the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, the TOTR project introduces active management in 205 forest divisions where one in three of India’s tigers now live. It is a Rs 88-crore initiative under the Compensatory Afforestation Fund, with 40 divisions chosen for the pilot phase. The goal: to create safer, better-managed corridors for tigers in human-dominated areas, while reducing conflict through community involvement and technology-based monitoring.
TOTR
According to India Today, the project comes at a decisive moment. In recent years, dispersing tigers have walked thousands of kilometres—from Tadoba to Odisha, from Telangana to Maharashtra—searching for unclaimed territories. These journeys ensure genetic exchange but often end in tragedy: road kills, retaliatory poisonings, and electrocutions. TOTR aims to manage these landscapes proactively rather than reactively.
However, the optimism around this initiative is tempered by a contradictory policy shift. Just weeks before TOTR’s launch, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) limited the country’s official tiger corridors to 32 “least-cost pathways.” The move, framed as a technical simplification for regulatory purposes, effectively erases more than 150 scientifically recognised routes mapped by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and the LRC Foundation. Conservation scientists warn that this decision could open critical habitats to unregulated infrastructure and undermine the very connectivity TOTR seeks to restore.
The corridor contradiction
The dual narrative—expanding tiger range through TOTR while shrinking official corridors—reveals India’s uneasy balance between political ambition and ecological reality. Policymakers often celebrate tiger numbers without confronting the governance paradox: growth within reserves means nothing if dispersing tigers have nowhere to go.
Dr. Gobind Sagar Bhardwaj, Director of WII, argues that TOTR will “strengthen multiple corridors” by improving forest management outside protected areas. Yet without formal recognition, those corridors remain vulnerable to mining leases, power lines, and new highways. Administrative optimism cannot compensate for regulatory retreat.
Political will or public relations?
Whether TOTR represents real political will or another symbolic gesture will depend on implementation. The pilot phase covers 40 divisions—but only sustained funding and monitoring can make this framework functional. India’s past initiatives have suffered from fragmented responsibility between the central environment ministry and state forest departments. If the NTCA continues to restrict the corridor map for bureaucratic convenience, even the most innovative fieldwork will struggle to protect dispersing tigers.
Beyond budgets, success hinges on transparency and accountability. Every rupee from the Rs 88-crore allocation should be traceable; every forest division under TOTR should publish open-access data on tiger movement, mortality, and conflict incidents. Without that, India risks creating another administrative acronym rather than a living conservation tool.
The Political 14-10-2025 [INDIA]
India’s new TOTR project—Tigers Outside Tiger Reserves—marks a turning point in conservation. Announced by Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav, it extends protection to 205 forest divisions where one-third of India’s tigers now roam.
The initiative promises to manage these landscapes proactively, using technology, local participation, and better planning to reduce conflict. Yet it also arrives amid controversy: the NTCA recently cut India’s official tiger corridors from 192 to just 32, weakening connectivity for dispersing tigers.
Experts call TOTR a test of political will. Expanding protection outside reserves is progress only if it comes with accountability, transparency, and consistent funding. India cannot celebrate rising tiger counts while shrinking their safe passage.
Real conservation begins when every tiger can move freely—across forests, borders, and bureaucracies.Will needed to make TOTR succeed lies not in the project’s name but in its continuity. India must treat connectivity as a constitutional responsibility, not a campaign announcement.
Tigers on the move
The story of TOTR is, ultimately, the story of India’s tigers themselves—creatures that move relentlessly through danger and adaptation. In one decade, tigers have crossed thousands of kilometres and multiple states, proving that coexistence is possible only if humans give them room to move.
If TOTR can expand the space for those journeys—legally, ecologically, and politically—it will mark a true shift in conservation. If not, it will join the long list of projects that mistook policy for protection.
Source: India Today – India
