India, July 29 -- This is the third of a 4-part series. Read the first, second and fourth parts.

Broadly, India's tiger conservation has focused on increasing tiger numbers by creating protected areas, launching conservation projects, encouraging tourism activities to improve funds and awareness, and relocating tigers when their numbers rise beyond the carrying capacity of the reserve. Dharmendra Khandal, a conse-rvation biologist with Ranthambore-based non-profit Tiger Watch, says that an approach focused on tiger numbers is not correct. He argues that there is a need to accept that habitat for tigers cannot be increased in the proportion of their rising population.

"Almost 50 per cent of the tiger reserves have been declared in the pa...