India is home to roughly three out of every four wild tigers on the planet — and on International Tiger Day, 29 July 2026, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis used that extraordinary statistic to spotlight the state's own quietly growing role in the global conservation story.

Posting from Nagpur — the city that sits at the heart of India's tiger country — Fadnavis wrote in Marathi and Hindi: 'जगातील एकूण वाघांपैकी सुमारे 75% वाघ भारतात आहेत' ('About 75 per cent of the world's total tigers are in India'). He added that Maharashtra has delivered 'remarkable work' in tiger conservation and that the state's tiger population 'is continuously rising.'

How India built the world's biggest tiger stronghold

The turnaround did not happen overnight. Project Tiger, launched by the central government in 1973, created a network of dedicated reserves, tightened anti-poaching enforcement, and mandated periodic population surveys. Over successive All India Tiger Estimation exercises — the first modern baseline was set in 2006 — the national count has climbed steadily, a trajectory that has made India the reference point for large-cat conservation worldwide.

The framework works because it is structural: buffer zones protect core habitats, forest communities are brought into the management loop, and census methodology has grown more rigorous with each cycle. India's commitments under international tiger conservation declarations have kept political attention — and funding — anchored to the numbers.

Maharashtra's stake in the tiger map

Nagpur is not a coincidental venue for this message. The city sits close to Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve, one of Maharashtra's flagship protected areas and among the most densely tigered reserves in the country. The state has expanded its reserve network and monitoring capacity in step with national targets, and Fadnavis's post signals that conservation performance is now a point of political pride — not just an administrative brief.

The next national tiger estimation will be the real test. If Maharashtra's numbers hold or climb, it will validate the reserve-management investments made over the past decade. Conservation groups and forest-department officials will be watching closely for any state notification expanding protected corridors — the kind of move that turns a good census into a durable trend.

India once faced the genuine prospect of losing its wild tigers entirely. That it now shelters the overwhelming majority of the species' global population is one of conservation's most striking reversals — and on International Tiger Day, Devendra Fadnavis made sure Maharashtra claimed its share of that story.