Project Tiger was launched in India:

Project Tiger is a centrally sponsored wildlife conservation scheme of the Government of India, created specifically to protect the Bengal tiger and its habitat after a nationwide census revealed a sharp decline in tiger numbers through the 20th century.

The scheme was formally launched on 1 April 1973 in Jim Corbett National Park, in the region that is now Uttarakhand (then part of Uttar Pradesh), starting with nine tiger reserves. It followed the 1972 All-India Tiger Census, which counted only around 1,827 tigers, down from an estimated 40,000 at the start of the century, and the recommendations of the task force set up to address this decline. The programme is administered today under the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), a statutory body constituted under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.

• 1982 relates to other wildlife and forest-administration developments of that period, not to the founding of this specific tiger-conservation scheme.

• 1992 marks India's engagement with global biodiversity commitments such as the Rio Earth Summit, not the start of this domestic programme, which had already been running for almost two decades by then.

• By 1996 the tiger-reserve network under this scheme had already been operating and expanding for over two decades, so this year does not correspond to its launch.

Government records from the National Tiger Conservation Authority and the Press Information Bureau confirm the launch year as 1973.