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Tigers imperiously prowling through the wild jungles used to be a common sight for centuries across India, but decades of hunting by wealthy British colonists and Indians, coupled with poaching have cut their number from about 40,000 100 years ago to around 1,400 today. Experts believe that India's dwindling tiger population will never recover and it will take a miracle to save those left from habitat destruction and poaching. Authorities say poachers killed at least 114 tigers across India between 1999 and 2003, while just 59 died of natural causes during that period. Recently, four tigers were found dead -- two of them poisoned by poachers -- inside Jim Corbett National Park in the foothills of the eastern Himalayas. Poorly armed and badly paid wildlife guards, mismanagement and corruption undermine the protection of tigers in India, say critics. In one reserve in western India, about 18 tigers have disappeared in a year. This has triggered national concern, prompting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to order a police probe and set up a special panel to try to stop the decline. The panel later said the country's big cats were under siege from poachers and people living in protected jungles and it called for thousands of villagers inside India's 28 tiger reserves to be relocated to save the endangered animals. Bandhavgarh tiger reserve, a vast jungle of small hills and valleys full of sal and bamboo trees in India's central highlands, is one of the few places where tigers can still be seen in their natural habitat. Animal lovers, wildlife photographers and tourists flock from all over the world to this reserve for the first-hand experience of seeing the big cat prowling in the wild. "It is really intense and you can watch them for hours and hours just breathing and drinking and moving around. It was so amazing just to see them in their own habitat," said Annie, a tourist from England. Smarna Singh, an Indian tourist from the neighbouring town of Jabalpur in central India, said a face-to-face encounter with the big cats was an incredible experience. "It is an incredible feeling because watching something in a natural environment is totally different from what you watch on television or films. It is much more beautiful, much more amazing," Singh said. Conservationists say that India, which has about half of the world's surviving tigers, is losing the battle to save the big cats. Belinda Wright, executive director of the Wildlife Protection Society of India says tigers are critically endangered. "It is a miracle that we have any tigers at all. I think that is an extraordinary achievement that the bulk of the wild tigers left in the world are here in India. Having said that, they are critically endangered. Numbers have plummeted over the last few years," said Wright. Wright said it was tragic that tigers were valued dead and not alive -- with everything from tiger bones to penises being used in traditional Chinese medicine. World trade in animal parts is second to narcotics and a single tiger skin can fetch up to 50,000 U.S. dollars in the international market. Wildlife groups say that people living inside the forests also pose a threat to the tigers as they are often hired by organised poachers to kill the animals. Villagers also cut trees for fuel and keep herds of cattle that compete for grazing pastures with the tiger's prey. Satyen Kumar Tiwari, a naturalist based in Bandhavgarh, said more man-animal conflict was eating into the tiger population. "Majority of buffer zone is being eroded under the human population pressure and I don't see, in a long run, the tiger will survive basically in the long run. Human population will always have the upper hand. So in that scenario, and the way the population is growing in this country, I think it is the next fifty years that we have and then the things will be gone," Tiwari said. Experts say that between the years 1850 to 1950, at least 100,000 tigers were killed by man; 25,000 people were killed by tigers; and around one million livestock were killed by the animals: proving that there was a huge amount of conflict between man and tigers. Conservationists say it is unlikely the dwindling population will ever recover, but the government is not giving up. In January, India said it would spend around 150 million U.S. dollars to save its tigers over the next five years, using some of the money to shift villages and tribal communities out of the animals' habitats. It will also establish eight new tiger reserves. P.B. Gangopadhyay, the chief warden of Bandhavgarh Tiger reserve, was hopeful for the future generations of tigers. "If we are able to protect the habitat of tiger there is no doubt that the tigers will remain. There is no problem about the breeding, no problem about the other biological parameters of tiger. It is only the habitat fragmentation and the poaching - these are the two issues," Gangopadhyay said. However, experts blame the authorities for their failure to understand the needs of the tigers and provide them protection and that has led to numbers falling.