Mismanagement now sits behind the rising tiger death toll in Madhya Pradesh, as reported by ThePrint. India’s biggest tiger state recorded 55 tiger deaths in 2025, the highest ever by any state since Project Tiger began in 1973. In just the first five months of 2026, another 34 tigers have already died.
The reasons stretch from electrocution and poaching to missing carcasses, delayed investigations and collapsing tracking systems. One tiger in Satpura Tiger Reserve reportedly disappeared for nearly a month before his decomposed body was found near an illegal opium field. Officials claimed satellite signals from the tiger’s collar were disrupted because of the US-Iran war. Twenty-four hours later, the same report confirmed poachers had electrocuted the tiger and poisoned its prey with urea because the animal threatened labour activity around illegal crops. The word Mismanagement barely covers the scale of the collapse.
The four-year-old tiger’s death exposed something deeper than one poaching incident. It showed a forest department struggling to explain why basic monitoring failed while a collared tiger vanished inside one of India’s most important tiger landscapes. Activist Ajay Dubey, who has spent years challenging the department in court, argued that many tiger deaths are entirely preventable. He questioned why tracking systems keep failing, why post-mortem protocols are ignored and why unnatural tiger deaths continue to rise while officials celebrate population numbers.
Mismanagement Has Turned Tiger Deaths Into Routine
Court records cited in the report show repeated failures across multiple reserves. In Shahdol district, nine tiger deaths between 2021 and 2023 reportedly never received final reports submitted to the National Tiger Conservation Authority. Independent investigation teams found carcasses recovered late, incomplete forensic investigations and post-mortems conducted by veterinarians with little experience handling wild animals. In Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve, final reports in several cases were filed years late. Some investigations reportedly failed to connect evidence to suspects, while treatment teams were accused of serious negligence.
The Madhya Pradesh forest department denied the allegations, insisting protocols are followed and action is taken in isolated cases. But Mismanagement becomes impossible to dismiss when the same failures repeat across reserves while tiger deaths continue climbing. Numbers alone cannot hide the pattern. A state can proudly announce census victories, but those claims become hollow when carcasses appear faster than accountability.
The report also exposed how tiger deaths are increasingly linked to infrastructure and human pressure around reserves. Tigers are being electrocuted by illegal wires meant for wild boar. Others die after targeting livestock near villages. Roads, railways and poaching networks continue to close around fragmented habitats. Disease now adds another layer of danger. At least five tigers in Kanha National Park reportedly died this month from Canine Distemper Virus, spread by unvaccinated dogs living around the reserve. The forest department has started vaccinating dogs, but the outbreak exposed another preventable vulnerability.
Poaching Networks Thrive Inside Weak Systems
Mismanagement becomes even darker when poaching networks enter the picture. The report described how a tiger trafficking case linked to Ethiopia eventually uncovered a large network operating across central India. Tiger hides traced back to Satpura moved through cities including Delhi, Kolkata and Gangtok before entering international trafficking routes connected to China, Myanmar, Nepal and Ethiopia. Once tigers are killed, their bodies are dismantled with brutal efficiency while skins, teeth and bones move through markets that still treat extinction as profit.
Residents around reserves openly accused sections of forest staff of working alongside poachers. One villager near Ratapani alleged that some officials knowingly ignore poaching for financial gain. Such claims remain allegations, but the report also described a disturbing 2025 case in Balaghat where the carcass of a tigress reportedly disappeared after questions emerged about missing body parts. Activists alleged the body was moved and destroyed to erase evidence of poaching. Eight officials were eventually suspended after an inquiry.
Madhya Pradesh still holds the largest tiger population in India, with 785 tigers counted in the 2022 census. Panna Tiger Reserve even recovered from local extinction after an ambitious reintroduction effort. Those successes matter. But conservationists warned clearly in the report that counting tigers is not the same as saving them. Real protection depends on habitat quality, honest governance and political courage. Without those foundations, Mismanagement becomes the silent predator inside the reserve itself. India’s tiger future will not collapse because tigers stopped breeding. It will collapse because governments kept celebrating numbers while the system beneath them quietly rotted, exactly the danger described in political will deciding whether tigers survive at all.
Source: ThePrint, India
Photo: ThePrint, India
