TThe initial news was shocking; An October 14 report by the Rajasthan forest department stated that 25 tigers were “missing” from the famous Ranthambore National Park and Tiger Reserve. While 11 animals could not be traced for more than a year, the other 14 animals could not be traced for months. According to the official census, the total number of tigers in Ranthambore was 52 in 2022. Biggest fear: Would Ranthambore suffer the fate of Sariska wildlife sanctuary in Rajasthan, where the local tiger population was wiped out in 2006? But better news came on November 6; forest officials found evidence of 10 of the 25 big cats. Two probes were ordered. On November 4, Pavan Kumar Upadhyay, chief conservator of forests (PCCF) and chief wildlife warden of Rajasthan, ordered an investigation into the missing tigers. Three days later, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) asked the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) to collect detailed intelligence on the matter. NTCA member secretary Gobind Sagar Bhardwaj led a team to Jaipur to evaluate reports of tigers sighted directly and spotted on trap cameras, the usual methods used to estimate tiger numbers in India, along with assessing boxer prints. Going beyond the usual tiger conservation issues such as habitat management, prey base, human-animal conflict, diseases and the threat of poaching, Ranthambore’s missing tigers bring into focus the troubling issue of unreliable tiger numbers. Although NTCA’s tiger counts, conducted every four years, now have greater reliability due to the use of cameras, experts consider it to be of poor quality as daily monitoring by local authorities of deaths, injuries, births and losses due to relocation of tigers to other locations. Therein lies the real problem.