India Counts 3,682 Tigers, 891 Asiatic Lions, 718 Snow Leopards and 6,327 River Dolphins as WWF's 2026 Living Planet Report Cites Tiger Recovery as Evidence for Hope

The Living Planet Report 2026, published by WWF and the Zoological Society of London on 8 October 2026, includes the recovery of wild tigers among its main evidence for hope, and the Press Information Bureau says India holds nearly 70 per cent of those tigers. India’s own counts, released by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and by the Gujarat government, put the country’s wild tigers at 3,682, its Asiatic lions at 891, its leopards at 13,874, its snow leopards at 718 and its river dolphins at 6,327.

The report’s headline figure is a 73.2 per cent average fall in monitored wildlife populations between 1970 and 2022. The Indian species below are the part of that picture where the official counts have gone up.

What the 73 per cent measures

The Living Planet Index follows 35,803 populations of 5,790 vertebrate species (amphibians, birds, fishes, mammals and reptiles). The report puts the average fall at 73.2 per cent over 52 years, about 2.5 per cent a year, and spells out what that does not mean: it is a change in relative abundance, not a count of animals, and it does not say that 73 per cent of species are declining. Around half of the monitored populations are stable or increasing, and the report says larger losses elsewhere outweigh those gains in the global average.

For Asia and the Pacific the index fell 49 per cent, based on 4,664 populations of 787 species, according to the report and its technical supplement. The 2024 edition had reported 73 per cent as well (72.9 per cent); the report says new data are added with each edition, so the two figures do not mean that average population sizes held steady in between.

The tiger chapter

The report uses tigers as its first case study of recovery. It says wild tiger numbers rose by over 70 per cent between 2010 and 2025, from about 3,200 to about 5,700, which it calls the first documented reversal of the species’ long-term decline. It credits national recovery plans, the Global Tiger Initiative, professional ranger units, protected-area expansion, cross-border anti-trafficking work and campaigns to cut demand, and says none of them would have been enough alone.

The Press Information Bureau’s backgrounder of 28 July 2026 gives a global figure of 5,711 wild tigers, a rise of around 78 per cent on 2010, and says India holds nearly 70 per cent of them. An earlier Bureau release of 29 July 2023 had said almost 75 per cent. The two shares come from different global baselines, and the Bureau does not reconcile them.

India’s 3,682 tigers

The All India Tiger Estimation of 2022, run by the National Tiger Conservation Authority and the Wildlife Institute of India with the state forest departments, put the tiger population at 3,682 on average, within a range of 3,167 to 3,925. The 2018 estimate was 2,967. The Bureau’s 2023 release gives the growth rate as 6.1 per cent a year and reports that unique tigers photographed rose from 2,461 in 2018 to 3,080 in 2022. Madhya Pradesh has the most tigers, 785, followed by Karnataka (563), Uttarakhand (560) and Maharashtra (444). Corbett Tiger Reserve has the highest count of any reserve, 260.

Project Tiger now covers 58 reserves across 18 states on about 84,500 square kilometres, or 2.56 per cent of India’s land, according to the Bureau’s 2026 backgrounder. The same field exercise walked 6,41,449 kilometres of forest and placed camera traps at 32,803 locations. How India counts its tigers and lions explains the method, and what the tiger number hides covers the 3,167 and 3,080 figures that sit beside 3,682.

The lions of Gujarat

Gujarat’s 16th lion census, held on 10 to 13 May 2025 across 11 districts and about 35,000 square kilometres, counted 891 Asiatic lions against 674 in 2020, a rise of 217 or 32.19 per cent. The state’s Chief Minister announced the figures in Gandhinagar on 21 May 2025. Down To Earth reports 196 adult males, 330 adult females, 140 sub-adults and 225 cubs, and the Tribune reports that adult females rose by 27 per cent, from 260 to 330.

The Union Environment Minister said on World Lion Day 2025 that the population stood at 284 in 1990, and a Bureau release of 10 August 2026 gives 523 for 2015. The same release says the lion’s range has grown from about 30,000 square kilometres in 2020 to nearly 35,000. Barda Wildlife Sanctuary in Devbhumi Dwarka district recorded 17 lions, the Tribune says, the first recorded presence there since 1879. The Gir story is told in the Asiatic lions of Gir.

Leopards, snow leopards and river dolphins

The fifth cycle of leopard estimation, released on 29 February 2024, put India’s leopards at 13,874 (range 12,616 to 15,132) against 12,852 in 2018. It sampled about 70 per cent of leopard habitat. Over the area sampled in both years the population grew 1.08 per cent a year, and Central India and the Eastern Ghats grew fastest, at 1.5 per cent.

The Snow Leopard Population Assessment in India, run from 2019 to 2023 by the Wildlife Institute of India, gave the country’s first scientific estimate: 718 snow leopards, with 477 in Ladakh, 124 in Uttarakhand and 51 in Himachal Pradesh. It covered over 70 per cent of the potential range, put cameras at 1,971 locations and photographed 241 distinct animals. The 718 is an estimate built from camera-trap data, not a headcount. Our article on the snow leopard assessment sets out the states and method.

The Prime Minister released the first riverine dolphin estimation at the National Board for Wildlife meeting in Gir on 3 March 2025. It estimated 6,327 dolphins from a survey of 28 rivers in eight states and over 8,500 kilometres, with Uttar Pradesh recording the most, followed by Bihar, West Bengal and Assam. Down To Earth’s report on the Living Planet Report gives the figure as 6,324 and the survey years as 2021 to 2023; the Bureau’s figure of 6,327 is used here. More is in the Ganges river dolphin project.

Where the report and the Indian figures meet

Down To Earth wrote on 8 October that the report highlights India’s tigers, rhinoceroses, Asiatic lions, leopards, snow leopards and river dolphins. We read the full English report and its technical supplement on 29 October 2026 and found the tiger chapter, the Asia and Pacific totals and an India reference on energy, but not a list of these Indian species counts; the figures above are therefore taken from the Indian surveys themselves. Down To Earth also gave a figure of more than 3,300 for the greater one-horned rhinoceros, which we could not match to an official release and have left out. All counts here are the latest published official figures as of 29 October 2026.

WWF-India’s Secretary-General and Chief Executive, Ravi Singh, said the report sets out how large the biodiversity crisis is and also carries a message of hope. SP Yadav, Director-General of the International Big Cat Alliance, said India is “doing exemplarily well in conservation of all five big cats” and credited government funding, scientific planning and technology.

What the experts add

The wildlife scientist YS Jhala told Down To Earth that India does well with species inside protected areas and that a matching strategy is still to be prepared for animals that live mostly outside them, such as the Great Indian bustard, the Indian wolf and foxes. Qamar Qureshi of the Wildlife Institute of India said growing big cat numbers add to human-wildlife conflict, which falls hardest on poorer communities, and that poaching remains a concern. In Gujarat, 44.22 per cent of lions now live outside forest areas, the Tribune reports. The leopard report notes a fall of 3.4 per cent a year in the Shivalik hills and Gangetic plains.

The Living Planet Report says its tiger gains are fragile: tigers occupy less than 8 per cent of their historic range and remain listed as Endangered. It also puts the money flowing into nature-harming activities in 2023 at about US$7.3 trillion, against about US$220 billion for activities that protect or restore nature.