India’s accounting for 75% of the global tiger population speaks volumes about the country’s conservation success story. Yet, Royal Bengal Tigers from Kaziranga National Park straying into fringe villages and busting multi-state tiger poaching gangs in Assam in recent periods have pressed the alarm bells against any complacency. These incidents are indicative of habitat degradation and poaching continuing to pose conservation threats to endangered species. Data made public by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) shows that 149 tiger deaths have so far been reported across the country over the past nine months and 11 days until October 11, the highest mortality in a single year since 2012. The All India Tiger Estimation puts the estimated population at 3682 in 2022. This implies that mortality in the current year has already surpassed 4% of the total estimated population. Besides, about 50% of these mortalities have been reported from outside tiger reserves. To put it in perspective, total mortality in 2022 was 121, and in 2021, the figure was 127. The rising trend in the current year is a worrying development. The NTCA considers all tiger deaths as “poaching” in the beginning until “supplementary details like post-mortem reports, forensic and lab reports, and circumstantial evidence are gathered for closing a particular tiger death case as either natural, poaching, or unnatural but not poaching.” About 27% of tiger mortality cases for the period 2012–2022 are yet to be closed by the NTCA. The NTCA has laid down a standard operating procedure that requires rigorous procedures to be followed for dealing with tiger deaths. This leaves no room for the wrong categorization of the mortality cause while drawing a logical conclusion based on scientific evidence. Quicker closing of the cases will help the authorities of the tiger reserves as well as the NTCA strengthen conservation initiatives and undertake stronger measures to reduce poaching incidents to nil. Allocation of more funds for tiger conservation and research will enable the States to improve monitoring and investigation of mortality for a faster resolution of the cases. Research on cases of natural death is also crucial to understand the long-term sustainability challenges and coping challenges of tigers due to climate change impacts, habitat degradation, availability of prey species, etc. Since the launch of Project Tiger in 1973, the number of tiger reserves in the country has grown to 53 over the past five decades, and these reserves cover an area of more than 75,000 square kilometres. The report titled “Status of tigers, co-predators, and prey in India, 2022 (Qamar Qureshi, Yadvendradev V. Jhala, Satya P. Yadav, and Amit Mallick (eds)) published by the NTCA has revealed that approximately 35% of the tiger reserves urgently require enhanced protection measures, efforts to reduce human dependence, habitat restoration, ungulate supplementation, and subsequent tiger reintroduction. A key highlight of the report is that 77% of the country’s tiger population lives inside these reserves and other protected areas, and the rest inhabits many forest patches within territorial forest divisions within multiuse landscapes. Currently, habitat connectivity for wild species is often tenuous, narrow, and under severe pressure due to linear infrastructure development, agriculture expansion, mining activities, deforestation, and other factors. This deterioration of habitat quality affects animal distribution and abundance significantly, it adds. The report also flagged the issue of corridor connectivity in the Northeast Hills landscape matrix facing various threats, including the development of numerous linear infrastructures, hydroelectric projects, and the depletion of prey species from the forested patches. Addressing these challenges is essential to ensuring the long-term survival and well-being of the diverse wildlife populations in this ecologically critical landscape, it insists. Building awareness about the conservation of tiger habitat as well as prey species among people residing in fringe villages of tiger reserves is critical to the protection of these connectivity corridors from encroachment for agriculture and industrial activities. A strong support of fringe dwellers for conservation of endangered species will also build opinion for the realignment of linear infrastructures like roads and bridges so that they do not lead to habitat fragmentation in buffer zones. This can be possible only if the Forest Department creates space for fringe dwellers for collaborative conservation initiatives and allows them to play the role of sentinel against tiger poaching. It will also help in reducing human-animal conflict in the vicinity of tiger reserves. A complete cessation of the conflict will deny poachers the space, who often take advantage of the prevailing conflict situation to intensify poaching activities by recruiting gullible people in fringe areas as gang members. The important message in the NTCA report that “Tigers act as indicators of the health of an intact ecosystem, which in turn provides vital ecosystem services essential for sustaining the planet and human welfare” needs to be disseminated to sustain the conservation success story.