Corbett National Park

Corbett National Park

Subject – Environment

Context – Union Minister of State for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Ashwini Kumar Choubey proposing to change the name of Corbett National Park to Ramganga National Park

Concept –

• Jim Corbett’s name has lent itself to India’s oldest and most celebrated national parks and to the cottage industry that has grown around it.
• But the Park was not always called Corbett.
• Set up in 1936 as India’s — and Asia’s — first national park, it was called Hailey National Park after Sir Macolm Hailey, the governor of the United Province. It was renamed Ramganga National Park, named after the river that flows through it, shortly after Independence and was rechristened yet again as Corbett National Park in 1956.
• Located in the Himalayan foothills near the tourist hill station of Nainital, Corbett National Park is spread over 520 sq km and is part of the Corbett Tiger Reserve which is over 1,288 sq km.
• The national park along with the neighbouring 301-sq km-Sonanadi Wildlife Sanctuary together make the critical tiger habitat of the Corbett Tiger Reserve.
• The place from where Project Tiger was launched in 1973, with its tiger population at 163, it boasts of a single largest tiger population in a tiger reserve and one of the highest tiger densities in the country.