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Mammals
Striped hyena, golden jackal, jungle cat, and the elusive caracal share this terrain. Rhesus macaque and langur troops occupy the forest canopy and the ruins scattered through it in equal measure.
A tiger reserve is often judged by a single animal, but Sariska rewards attention paid elsewhere too.
Sariska’s tiger population has climbed every year since the 2008 reintroduction. Its leopard density is the highest of any tiger reserve in India, and bird surveys have logged 471 recorded species. These figures shift with each new census, but they consistently place Sariska among the richest wildlife habitats in northern India.
Tigers
Every tiger walking this forest today descends from a reintroduction that began in 2008, which gives each sighting here a different weight than it would carry elsewhere.
Tiger territories cross both sides of the reserve. Several resident tigers range between Sariska Gate and Tehla, so sighting odds are broadly comparable across the core area rather than concentrated at either entrance, and resident tigresses now raise litters in the same zones their predecessors once vanished from entirely.
How They Came BackLeopards
Leopards here are not an incidental sighting. A government leopard census placed Sariska’s density at over 21 individuals per 100 sq. km., the highest recorded among any camera-trapped tiger reserve in the country, with the population now in the low hundreds and ahead of most other reserves in absolute numbers as well as density.
Leopards favour the rockier, less trafficked terrain on the Tehla side of the reserve in particular, and sightings here tend to reward stillness over speed, a cat that reveals itself on its own schedule.
Also Here
Striped hyena, golden jackal, jungle cat, and the elusive caracal share this terrain with some of the highest antelope densities recorded anywhere in India.
Striped hyena, golden jackal, jungle cat, and the elusive caracal share this terrain. Rhesus macaque and langur troops occupy the forest canopy and the ruins scattered through it in equal measure.
Sambar deer and nilgai move through Sariska in some of the highest antelope densities recorded anywhere in India, gathering at waterholes through the dry months in numbers that draw predators toward the same clearings.
470+ recorded species: paradise flycatchers, crested serpent eagles, and painted spurfowl share the canopy with winter migrants, and the reserve holds India’s largest recorded population of peafowl.