CORBETT NATIONAL PARK - ENVIRONMENT
News: Supreme
Court panel: Uttarakhand tiger reserve road not for commercial traffic
What's in the news?
● Underlining
that “conservation priority of the forest area far outweighs the commercial
transport needs of the state government”, the Central Empowered Committee (CEC)
of the Supreme Court has recommended against blacktopping a 4.7-km stretch of a
key forest road in the buffer zone of Uttarakhand’s Rajaji tiger reserve.
Corbett National Park:
● Jim
Corbett Tiger Reserve lies in the ecologically important Bhabar-Terai Region, on the southern part of the Shivalik Mountains in
northern India.
● Jim
Corbett National Park is located in the Kumaon and Pauri-Garhwal Regions of
Uttarakhand State.
● Jim
Corbett National Park was established as Hailey
National Park in 1936 and it is India’s oldest national park.
● The
park is located in the foothills of the Central Himalayas - about 50 km
northwest of Ramnagar.
● It
mainly occupies the broad Patlidun Valley, through which the Ramganga River
flows in a westerly direction.
● It
is honoured as the place where Project Tiger
was first launched in 1973.
Species present:
● Apart
from Royal Bengal Tiger, it is also
home to a sizable population of the endangered
Asiatic elephant and other critically endangered species including the Gharial.
● Other
mammals such as jungle cats, barking deer, spotted deer, sambar deer, sloth
etc. are also found there.
Rivers flowing through the National Park:
● Ramganga, Sonanadi,
Mandal, Palain and Kosi are the major rivers
flowing through the Jim Corbett National Park.