Madhya Pradesh Quiz: Forests, National Parks and Tiger Reserves of MP

Kanha, spread over Mandla and Balaghat districts in the Maikal range, was declared a national park in 1955, which makes it the oldest in the state, and it became one of the nine reserves with which Project Tiger began in 1973.

The hard ground barasingha or swamp deer had fallen to a few dozen animals in the Kanha meadows, and a long programme of grassland management and protection brought the population back, which is why the barasingha is the state animal of Madhya Pradesh and the emblem of Kanha.

Kuno, in Sheopur district on the Kuno river, received the cheetahs flown in from Namibia in September 2022 under Project Cheetah, the first intercontinental translocation of a large carnivore; the area had been cleared and prepared years earlier as a second home for the Asiatic lions of Gir, which gave…

Bandhavgarh National Park lies in Umaria district around the old Bandhavgarh fort, which stands on a hill inside the park and once belonged to the rulers of Rewa.

Panna National Park, spread over Panna and Chhatarpur districts along the Ken river, lies beside the diamond bearing tract of Panna, the only diamond mining area worked in India, and it lost its tigers completely before animals brought from other reserves re-established a breeding population, a recovery cited as a…

The Bhimbetka rock shelters, with their prehistoric paintings, lie in the Raisen district within the limits of the Ratapani sanctuary, a teak forest of the Vindhyan range south of Bhopal that was later notified as a tiger reserve.

The Pachmarhi Biosphere Reserve covers the Satpura National Park with the Bori and Pachmarhi wildlife sanctuaries in the Satpura range, and it is part of the UNESCO world network of biosphere reserves; Pachmarhi, the only hill station of the state, and Dhoopgarh, its highest point, lie inside this landscape.

The Bhoj wetland is the pair of lakes at Bhopal, the Upper Lake built in the eleventh century in the time of Raja Bhoj and the Lower Lake beside it, and it was added to the Ramsar list of wetlands of international importance in 2002, the first Ramsar site of…

Pench lies in Seoni and Chhindwara districts and continues across the state line into the Nagpur district of Maharashtra, so that each state manages its own Pench reserve on either side of the Pench river that gives the park its name; the forest is teak country and is often linked…

Tendu leaf, the wrapper in which the beedi is rolled, is collected from the dry deciduous forests of Madhya Pradesh in the hot months, and the state leads the country in its production, the collection being organised through forest produce cooperatives that pay a collection rate to tribal gatherers; sal…