Two documents published by the National Tiger Conservation Authority and the Wildlife Institute of India in June 2026 carry figures for western Rajaji, and the figures do not sit comfortably beside each other. One is a reintroduction table that starts the supplementation programme in 2020 and lists 5 (2M, 3F) as initially introduced. The other is a management roadmap whose 2022 estimate for the western part of the reserve is 0, set against 54 for the reserve as a whole. Both are official, both are recent, and neither is a census of western Rajaji taken on a stated date. This page reads them side by side and explains what each number is built to measure.
Sources checked on 28 October 2026: Reintroduction and Population Recovery of Tigers in India: Field Experiences and Key Learnings, cited by its authors as NTCA-WII (2026); and Roadmap for Active Management of Tigers in India, cited as NTCA and WII (2026). Both are held on the authority's own site under its June 2026 uploads. No press report or secondary summary is used.
Two documents, two kinds of number
The first document is a set of field case studies on reintroduction and augmentation, with a closing table headed Tiger Reintroduction Sites in India. Its columns are Year, Type of intervention, Source site, Before Introduction, Initially Introduced and Present Population. Every figure in it describes a programme: where animals came from, how many were moved in, and what the row reports afterwards. It is a record of an intervention.
The second document is a national roadmap built around the All India Tiger Estimation cycle, with reserve profiles, a landscape table and a status table that rates each tiger reserve on three axes: tiger, prey and habitat, marked as increasing or stable, depressed, or absent and non-functional. Its figures are survey-cycle estimates and status ratings. It is a measurement and a diagnosis, not a log of movements.
Reading the two as rival answers to one question is the mistake this page is written to prevent.
What the reintroduction table records for western Rajaji
The row is for Rajaji Tiger Reserve (Western part), Uttarakhand. Its Year is 2020. Its type of intervention is supplementation and augmentation. Its source site is Corbett Tiger Reserve. Its Before Introduction figure is 0, its Initially Introduced figure is 5 (2M, 3F), and its Present Population figure is 5. The narrative section beside the Rajaji case study adds that the Uttarakhand Forest Department initiated tiger augmentation through translocation of tigers from the Corbett landscape in 2020.
Three readings of that row are worth ruling out. The Year of 2020 is the programme's recorded start year in a table that carries one year per programme; it is not a claim that five animals were moved on a single date, and neither document itemises the dates on which each of the five moved, so this page assigns none. The Present Population figure is a column label inside a table with no as-of date printed for that column, so it is not a statement about the number of animals in western Rajaji today. And the row is one programme's tally, not an estimate produced by a survey.
The same document disagrees with its own table
Immediately before the case study text, the document states that the western part of Rajaji became largely devoid of tigers, with only two resident tigresses reported, limiting natural recovery. The table's Before Introduction column for the same row reads 0. Two resident animals and a zero baseline are different statements about the same period, printed in the same publication, and this page does not reconcile them or declare either one correct. It reports the disagreement, because a reader who sees only the table and a reader who sees only the prose would otherwise come away with different pictures of the starting point.
What the roadmap records
The roadmap's landscape table for the Shivalik Hills and Gangetic Plains puts Rajaji at 13 tigers for AITE 2014 and 54 for AITE 2022, with a 2022 density of 8.15 per 100 sq km. Those are whole-reserve figures covering the eastern and western parts together.
The roadmap's profile for section 25, Rajaji Tiger Reserve, Uttarakhand (Western Part), gives a Tiger Population (AITE, 2022) of 0, with a status of Tiger down, Prey up, Habitat down. Its limiting factors are disrupted connectivity with eastern Rajaji and the broader Corbett landscape, disturbance from expanding settlements in adjoining areas, and tourism. The document's national status table repeats the pattern in one line each: Rajaji (East) is rated up for tiger, up for prey and up for habitat; Rajaji (West) is rated down for tiger, up for prey and down for habitat.
Note what that last row is. It is a three-symbol status rating derived from the 2022 cycle and expert evaluation, and the document defines its symbols as increasing or stable, depressed, and absent or non-functional. It is not a count of animals, and a down arrow is not a zero.
Why the numbers do not contradict each other so much as measure different things
The reintroduction table's 5 is a cohort figure: animals handled as part of one programme, totalled across the programme's life. The roadmap's 0 is an estimate attached to a particular survey cycle, AITE 2022, produced from that cycle's methods. A tally of animals moved and an estimate of animals detected in a survey year answer different questions, and the timeline they sit on is not the same either: the programme row carries a start year of 2020 and a cumulative total, while the estimate carries the 2022 cycle label, and neither June 2026 document publishes the release dates that would let a reader line the two up.
Two cautions follow from that gap. A zero produced by an estimate is not proof of physical absence: an estimate can miss animals that are present but not detected, and the roadmap itself notes that tiger populations are inherently dynamic, with territorial occupancy and dispersal shifting over time. Conversely, a programme total is not proof that those animals are alive, resident or breeding in the area where they were taken.
What none of this settles
Nothing in these two documents tells a reader how many tigers are in western Rajaji at a given moment, whether every introduced animal survived, whether any litter has been recorded, or whether the connective tissue between east and west has improved. Those questions need dated monitoring output, and the pages checked here do not publish it, so this page offers no survival count and no verdict on the programme, and leaves the older tiger counts published elsewhere on this site unreconciled with these tables. Our research and monitoring article explains the kinds of work that produce such answers, and the wildlife crossings article covers the connectivity side, which the roadmap names as a limiting factor.
Where to read next
For how such figures are produced in the first place, see wildlife research and monitoring at the reserve. For the connectivity the roadmap calls a limiting factor, wildlife crossings and linear infrastructure sets out the crossing work in the landscape. For how Rajaji sits beside other Indian reserves, Rajaji versus other tiger reserves, and for the public funding record, Project Tiger funding, releases and sanctions.
Western Rajaji supplementation questions answered
How many tigers do the June 2026 NTCA documents record for western Rajaji?
They print two different figures, and neither is a dated census of the western part today. The reintroduction table in Reintroduction and Population Recovery of Tigers in India gives the western row a Year of 2020, a "Before introduction" figure of 0, an "Initially introduced" figure of 5 (2M, 3F) and a "Present Population" figure of 5. The Roadmap for Active Management of Tigers in India gives the western part a Tiger Population (AITE, 2022) of 0. Both are reproduced here as published, in the table columns they belong to, and neither is restated as a current count of animals in the field.
Does the Year of 2020 mean all five animals arrived in that one year?
No, and this page does not say so. In that table the Year column carries a single start year for the programme while the "Initially introduced" column carries a total for the whole cohort, which is how a programme-level row is built. Neither of the two June 2026 documents itemises the date on which each animal moved, so this page assigns no release years at all rather than compressing a multi-year effort into one season. The table is at https://ntca.gov.in/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Tiger-Reintroduction-Field-Learnings-Case-Studies-Final-June.pdf.
Does "Before introduction: 0" mean there were no tigers in western Rajaji?
It does not establish that, and the same document disagrees with it in prose. The narrative beside the Rajaji case study states that the western part became largely devoid of tigers with only two resident tigresses reported before augmentation, while the table’s Before column reads 0. A zero in a table cell and two animals reported in the text are not the same statement, and this page does not choose between them. Separately, a zero returned by a survey cycle is an estimate, not proof that no tiger was physically present on the ground at any moment.
What is AITE 2022, and what does it say about the reserve as a whole?
AITE is the All India Tiger Estimation cycle, and both June 2026 documents use its 2022 round as the reference point for status. Table 1 of the roadmap puts the whole of Rajaji at 54 tigers for AITE 2022 against 13 for AITE 2014, with a density of 8.15 per 100 sq km. The same document’s section 25 gives the western part a Tiger Population (AITE, 2022) of 0 and a status of Tiger down, Prey up, Habitat down, and its summary table repeats that rating for Rajaji (West) while rating Rajaji (East) up, up, up. Those are a whole-reserve estimate and a regional status rating, not two counts of the same thing. The document is at https://ntca.gov.in/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Road-Map-Active-Management-of-Tigers_Final_June-2026.pdf.
Can these records tell us whether the supplementation programme worked?
Not on their own, and this page draws no such conclusion. The documents show a programme record, a table label for present population, a survey-cycle estimate for a period that the record does not date by release, and status arrows for tiger, prey and habitat. They do not publish individual fates, breeding outcomes, a dated current count for the west, or a monitoring report that would settle survival, dispersal or present occupancy. Answering that question would need monitoring data these two publications do not contain, so this page reports what is printed and stops there.