India is gearing up for its next big tiger headcount in 2026. Training of frontline staff has already begun in states like Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, and Telangana, where forest guards are learning how to walk transects, read pugmarks, and handle camera traps for the year-long exercise.
The last All India Tiger Estimation in 2022 put the country's tiger population at an average of 3,682 -- nearly three-quarters of the world's wild tigers. Karnataka emerged as one of the strongholds, with 563 tigers, the second-highest total in India.
Against this backdrop, the way India actually counts its tigers becomes a story in itself. And that is where the field view from Karnataka's forest department comes in.
Phase 1: Seven Days of Boots on the Ground
Dr. Ramesh Kumar P, IFS, Conservator of Forests, Project Tiger, Government of Karnataka calls Phase 1 the most elaborate part of the census. It runs for about a week, and for three of those days, the beat guard is literally on his feet.
"Phase 1 goes on for three days of intense walking. Every day, the beat guard covers about five kilometres, so he walks fifteen kilometres in three days," he explains.
During this time, guards conduct what he calls a carnivore sign survey. They aren't chasing tigers for sightings. Instead, they look for evidence: pugmarks, remains of kills, scrape marks, and even excreta that show a big cat has passed through recently.
Once that is done, they move to a two-kilometre line transect. Here, the focus shifts from predator to prey. Guards slowly walk a straight line and count all the animals they can directly see -- deer, sambar, wild buffalo, and other herbivores that form the tiger's menu. They also note angles and distances from the line to estimate prey density later.
The next layer is vegetation and human pressure. Dr. Ramesh says teams take five circular plots along their route. In two circles they count trees, in two they count shrubs, and in one they measure grass. They also mark out a strip of about two to twenty metres to record how much grass is available, how many trees have been cut, and how much cattle dung is present -- all indicators of forest health and human disturbance.
From this, a simple logic emerges on the ground: if the grass is good, prey is good. If prey is good, tigers are good. If both grass and prey are healthy and human signs are low, the landscape can support more tigers.
All this fieldwork, data compilation, and checking add up to roughly seven days to complete Phase 1 for a given beat, before the files and forms move up the chain.
Phase 2: Eyes in the Sky and on the Screen
Phase 2 shifts from boots to bytes. This is handled by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehradun, which has been the scientific backbone of the national estimation since 2006.
"Phase 2 is done by the Wildlife Institute of India," Dr. Ramesh says. "They use satellite images and tracks. They even look at night movement, because lesser light at night will encourage tiger movements."
Here, the raw field data from Phase 1 is combined with remotely sensed information: forest cover, terrain, water bodies, and human disturbance. Experts model which areas are more suitable for tigers and which are under pressure. This information then feeds directly into the most talked-about part of the census, camera trapping.
Phase 3: Grids, Cameras, and Stripe IDs
The third phase is where technology meets the tiger's stripes.
"In Phase 3, four square kilometres is marked as one grid. One grid will have one pair, which means two cameras installed," Dr. Ramesh explains. This grid-based layout is part of the standard national protocol for camera trapping and capture-recapture analysis.
Where those cameras go is not guesswork. The information from Phase 1 decides the locations -- trails with consistent pugmarks, waterholes used by prey, and ridgelines that tigers like to walk. Every national park, tiger reserve, and notified reserve forest in tiger country is covered with these grids as far as possible.
Cameras are left in the field for about twenty-five days. Every alternate day, staff trek back to each point, remove the memory card, insert a fresh one, and carry the data back by hand. At the end of the exercise, specialised software matches stripe patterns on the flanks of tigers to identify individual animals -- much like recognising a fingerprint.
2022 estimation recorded 563 tigers in Karnataka, identified by their stripe patterns. That figure aligns with official data, placing Karnataka among India's top tiger-holding states.
The Gap That Cameras Can't Cover
Even with this massive effort, not every forest patch can be camera-trapped. Cost is one hard limit. "Each camera costs around thirty thousand rupees," Dr. Ramesh notes. There simply aren't enough units to cover every square kilometre of potential tiger habitat.
That is where what he calls the last stage, "extra populate," comes in -- scientifically known as extrapolation. Only part of the tiger landscape is sampled with cameras. Using the Phase 1 sign and prey data plus habitat models from Phase 2, experts estimate how many tigers likely use similar but unsampled forests nearby.
He also points out another important gap: cubs are deliberately not counted. "About twenty percent of the estimated tiger numbers will not be found directly in the survey. Also, cubs are not counted.
Fifty percent of the cubs will not survive up to one year, even if they are with their mother," he says. Mothers push cubs to become independent around two to two-and-a-half years of age. Only after that do they show up as independent individuals in the census.
From first transect walk to the final modelling and report, the whole cycle of one national estimation takes about a year.
Karnataka's Five Tiger Reserves and the 2026 Test
Karnataka has five tiger reserves -- Bandipur, Nagarahole, Bhadra, Kali (Dandeli-Anshi), and BRT. About 67 percent of the state's tigers live inside these reserves; the rest are scattered through other forests and wildlife sanctuaries, moving along corridors and fringe areas.
For the 2026 census, these reserves will again be the core of the exercise in Karnataka. But the real story will also lie outside -- how many tigers are now using territorial forests, plantation landscapes, and human-dominated edges, and whether prey and grass -- the two simple indicators Dr. Ramesh talks about -- are keeping up.
All India Tiger Estimation (AITE) is widely recognised as the world's largest wildlife survey -- unmatched in both scale and precision. Conducted across more than 400,000 square kilometres of forests in over 20 states, it mobilises an army of over 60,000 forest staff and field experts who walk transects, set up camera traps, and collect data over an entire year.
The 2022 cycle used more than 40,000 camera traps, earning India a Guinness World Record for the world's largest camera trap wildlife survey. This colossal operation blends satellite imagery, field surveys, and data analytics to create the most comprehensive picture of a single species ever attempted, a feat no other country has replicated at this scale.
Why This Census Matters Now
With India already holding around 3,682 tigers and training for the 2026 cycle underway, the census is more than a periodic headcount. It tells forest departments where protection is working, where habitat is shrinking, where conflict is rising, and where new reserves or corridors are urgently needed.
On the ground, though, it starts with something very basic: a beat guard walking five kilometres in the forest, eyes on the mud for a single pugmark. As Dr. Ramesh's description makes clear, the big national number that everyone quotes in press conferences is really built on thousands of such small, careful steps.