Park Name Kanha National Park (940 Kms)	State Madhya Pradesh
Country India	Santuary Type Any, Wildlife Sanctuary, Tiger Reserve, National Park
Best Time to Visit Any, November, December, January, February, March, April

Overview

Kanha Tiger Reserve, also called Kanha National Park, is one of the tiger reserves of India and the largest national park of Madhya Pradesh, state in the heart of India. The present-day Kanha area was divided into two sanctuaries, Hallon and Banjar, of 250 and 300 km2 respectively. Kanha National Park was created on 1 June 1955 and in 1973 was made the Kanha Tiger Reserve. Today it stretches over an area of 940 km2 in the two districts Mandla and Balaghat. Together with a surrounding buffer zone of 1,067 km2 and the neighboring 110 km2 Phen Sanctuary it forms the Kanha Tiger Reserve. This makes it the largest National Park in Central India. Kanha Tiger Reserve was ranked in the top 10 Famous Places for Tourists.

The park has a significant population of royal Bengal tiger, Indian leopards, the sloth bear, barasingha and Indian wild dog. The lush sal and bamboo forests, grassy meadows and ravines of Kanha provided inspiration to Rudyard Kipling for his famous novel Jungle Book.

WILDLIFE

Kanha Tiger Reserve has species of tigers, leopards, wild dogs, wild cats, foxes and jackals. Among the deer species, swamp deer (Cervus duavcelli branderi) or hard ground barasingha is pride of the place as it is the only subspecies of swamp deer in India. The animal is adapted to hard ground unlike swamp deer of the north which live in marshy swamps. The reserve has been instrumental in rescuing the swamp deer from extinction. Indian gaur (Bos guarus), belonging to the ox genus, is found in Kanha but seen mostly as winter ends. In summer gaur inhabit meadows and water holes in the park.[citation needed]

Other commonly seen animals in the park include the spotted deer, sambar, barking deer and the four-horned deer. The latter can be seen at Bamni Dadar climb. Recently, mouse deer have also been discovered in the tiger reserve.[citation needed]

Black buck have inexplicably become very rare.[5] They vanished completely, but have been reintroduced recently inside a fenced area in the park. Nilgai can still be seen near the Sarahi Gate, while the Indian wolf once commonly seen at Mocha is a rare sight now. Hyena and sloth bear are seen occasionally. Langurs and wild boars are common, but the pugnacious rhesus macaque is seen less often.[citation needed]

Nocturnal animals like fox, hyena, jungle cat, civets, porcupine, ratel or honey badger and hares can be seen outside the park confines. Reptiles like pythons, cobras, krait, rat snakes, vipers, keelbacks and grass snakes are nocturnal animals, and are therefore rarely seen. There are many species of turtles as well as amphibians found in or near the water bodies.[citation needed]

Kanha and Satpura National Park being a part of Gondwana, now famous as a tiger reserve, was once ruled by wild Indian elephants