India, July 11 -- There is one phone call every Divisional Forest Officer dreads. It is the call to the Chief Wildlife Warden reporting the death of a tiger or a leopard. Sometimes, it is a territorial fight. Sometimes, it looks like a revenge killing. Sometimes, it is an animal that did not survive a rescue. The call is brief. But it carries a heavy message. It reflects a system struggling to keep pace with a landscape that is changing faster than the rules meant to govern it.

These calls have become more frequent in Madhya Pradesh in recent years. Not because wildlife management has succumbed. In many ways, precisely because it has succeeded.

The fortress that once made sense

For decades, Indian wildlife management rested on a simple...