India, June 2 -- On the edges of India's forests, a new tiger story is emerging. These tigers do not range grasslands or stalk deer in open forests. Instead, they move through the dense, impenetrable thickets of Lantana camara. They hunt where wild herbivores rarely tread. Their prey is not chital or sambar, but cattle-often old, unproductive or free-ranging. And they are increasingly found not inside protected areas but just beyond them. After sugarcane tigers, India now faces another stranger chapter: the rise of the "lantana tigers".

It is more than a metaphor. It is an ecological pattern unfolding across the country, in landscapes surrounding tiger reserves like Bandhavgarh, Tadoba, Kanha and Pench. It is a story shaped by an invasiv...