For the first time, India's national tiger census counted the territorial forests around Nagpur on their own - and found them full [1]. The estimate came back at 42 to 45 tigers, more than double the roughly 18 the area had been thought to hold [1].
The count was no guess: surveyors deployed some 1,200 camera traps across three phases beginning in December 2025, and officials say the final tally is unlikely to land below 45 [1]. The figure is preliminary - the Wildlife Institute of India's full report is still to come - but the direction is unmistakable [1].
Tigers are slow to recover and quick to vanish, which makes a doubling in one division a genuinely large thing [1]. In forests that a generation ago were losing them, the cameras now keep finding more [1].
