A plastic container floating in the Ramganga River might seem like an ordinary piece of litter.
But in January 2020, tourists at Corbett Tiger Reserve watched a tigress and two cubs chewing one.
The photographs, taken in the Dhikala range, were handed to the reserve authorities on 30 January. Corbett officials ordered an inquiry into how the plastic container reached the reserve. At the time, the reserve was already a plastic-free zone, and officials said it could have entered through the river from settlements upstream.
Six years later, India is putting the problem on a very different footing.
On 25 September 2026, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), in collaboration with the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), launched the sixth cycle of the Management Effectiveness Evaluation of Tiger Reserves (MEE-TR).
MEETR 2026: 14 evaluation teams have been constituted to assess 58 tiger reserves across India. Key highlights include a new criterion on solid waste management and the inclusion of active management of tigers in tiger reserves, strengthening the evaluation framework. https://t.co/MDjYysYIEA
— National Tiger Conservation Authority (@ntca_india) September 25, 2026
For the first time, solid waste management has been made a separate evaluation criterion.
The assessment will cover all 58 tiger reserves in India and will examine waste generated at forest posts, through tourism and at wildlife rescue centres, including biomedical waste. Independent multidisciplinary teams will assess how reserves are being managed, using a framework that looks at everything from planning and resources to actual conservation outcomes.
It is not a new tiger census. No scores have been released yet, and the exercise does not, by itself, report whether tiger numbers have risen or fallen.
The question is, if a reserve cannot manage what people leave behind, how effectively is it managing wildlife habitat?
The plastic problem was already visible
Corbett was not an isolated case.
In July 2024, The Indian Express reported that Amrabad Tiger Reserve in Telangana had collected 17,000 kg of recyclable and 33,000 kg of non-recyclable waste during 2023-24. The reserve had been dealing with plastic entering through tourism, roadside commerce and settlements.
A departmental assessment found that a large share consisted of small plastic water bottles and multilayered packaging from food and snack products. Forest staff began checking vehicles at entry points, while waste was segregated and sent for recycling or other disposal.
But the scale of the collection also reveals that not all waste comes from tourists.
A garbage dump can become a wildlife feeding ground
In 2024, researchers from WII studied what happens around garbage sites near the western part of Rajaji Tiger Reserve in Uttarakhand.
Shashank Nagarale, along with WII researchers Bilal Habib, Shivam Shrotriya and Bivash Pandav, used camera traps at 10 garbage sites and recorded 437 trap nights. Their study found that wild mammals were regularly using these places.
The assessment will cover all 58 tiger reserves in India and will examine waste generated at forest posts, through tourism and at wildlife rescue centres, including biomedical waste. Photograph: (Deep Kathikar; Soumen Bakshi.)
Sambar had the highest visitation, followed by Indian crested porcupines and spotted deer. Rhesus macaques and wild pigs also visited the sites. The researchers recorded food wrappers, disposable items, food waste, religious offerings, sanitary waste, pharmaceutical waste, plastic and other materials in the dumps.
That changes the meaning of the word waste.
In this video, a tiger chewing a plastic bottle shows how plastic pollution has breached core wildlife habitats. This is not simple litter; it is a threat to biodiversity. Data shows macro-plastics cause internal blockages, while microplastics contaminate the food chain from the soil up. Through biomagnification, these toxins accumulate inside apex predators, causing severe health issues. As apex predators, tigers anchor the food chain and sustain the entire ecological balance. To protect their habitats, we must remain mindful of plastic pollution and stop throwing waste into the wild. VC: Anil Vohra (sultanofthejungle) #SaveTheTiger #PlasticPollution #WildlifeConservation #BeatPlasticPollution #Microplastics
— Dr. PM Dhakate (@paragenetics) June 29, 2026
A garbage dump near a forest is not necessarily an empty pile waiting to be cleaned. For some animals, it can become a source of food.
The problem is what follows.
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Animals may begin spending more time around human settlements and roads. Their movements can change.
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Species that would normally avoid people can become accustomed to human presence.
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And food waste can attract domestic animals and other opportunistic species, creating new points of contact between wildlife, livestock, dogs and people.
A tiger reserve is more than its tigers
There is another clue in India’s own management assessments.
The previous MEE framework has already identified garbage as a management concern in individual reserves. At Satpura Tiger Reserve, for instance, the evaluation recorded problems with waste generated by hotels and restaurants around the reserve and called for better waste management in tourism areas such as Churna and Madhai.
Elsewhere, reserves have tried different approaches. Periyar has run a long-standing plastic-reduction programme, while Corbett requires visitors to carry back non-biodegradable waste.
The new MEE criterion brings these everyday measures into the formal assessment of management effectiveness.
That matters because conservation is not only about counting tigers.
A reserve needs functioning patrols, healthy prey populations, connected habitats, controlled tourism, community participation and wildlife monitoring. It also needs to deal with the material footprint created by the people working in and visiting these landscapes.
The new evaluation does not suggest that garbage is the biggest threat facing India’s tigers.
It recognises that a plastic bottle at a forest post, a food wrapper outside a tourist camp or biomedical waste from a rescue centre is also part of how a protected area is managed.
And from this evaluation cycle onward, that management will be measured.
