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As India’s national animal, the tiger has long been a focus of conservationists. In spite of rapid urbanization, poaching and human-animal conflicts, the tiger population has more than doubled in the country. From 1,411 tigers during the first tiger census in 2006 to 2,967 in 2018, the Wildlife Institute of India has recorded an approximately 6 percent per annum increase in tiger population over the years.

Most of the world’s tigers—75 percent of the total number of tigers by Indian government estimates— live in India, making it a key player in global efforts to protect the species. India has 53 tiger reserves, which are connected to other tiger-safe habitats through wildlife corridors. These corridors are protected natural thoroughfares that enable the big cats and other animals to move from one habitat to another.

While these corridors are vital to the continued survival and growth of India’s tiger population, they must coexist with the lives and livelihoods of local people and also acknowledge other demands on the land they occupy. Finding an appropriate balance between conservation and development was the overall goal of a collaborative U.S.-India study led by researchers at New York City-based Columbia University and the Network for Conserving Central India (NCCI), where the idea for the study originated. Published in 2022, this study was based on five previously published studies on tiger connectivity in central India.

“Corridors ensure that a species, like the tiger, can maintain healthy and genetically-diverse populations,” says Jay Schoen, a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University’s Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Program and a co-author of the study.