India's 2022 All India Tiger Estimation reported approximately 3,682 wild tigers, up from 2,967 in 2018, per the National Tiger Conservation Authority. India now hosts roughly three-quarters of the global wild tiger population, half a century after the launch of Project Tiger.
The estimate rests on a two-stage design. Forest personnel covered more than 641,000 kilometers on foot to log signs of tigers and prey across habitats, after which roughly 325,000 camera traps recorded passing animals. Because stripe patterns are individually distinctive, analysts directly identified 3,080 unique tigers from imagery. Capture-recapture style models then produced the fuller estimate of 3,682, bounded by a stated interval of about 3,167 to 3,925. Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, and Uttarakhand led state totals.
Interpreting the number requires care. It is a modelled estimate with an uncertainty range, not a census, because detection is imperfect and not every animal is photographed. Trend comparisons across years can be confounded if survey coverage, camera density, or analytical methods shift between cycles. A rising national aggregate can also mask localised declines in specific reserves or source populations. These caveats do not undermine the result so much as define its meaning: within a quantified range, and built on unusually extensive fieldwork, it stands as one of the more rigorous large-mammal assessments conducted anywhere.