Royal Bardia National Park is situated in the mid far western Terai, east of the Karnali River, Nepal. The park is the largest and most undisturbed wilderness area in the Terai. About 70% of the park is covered with forest with the balance a mixture of grassland, savannah and riverine forest.
Bardia was a royal hunting reserve of Nepal's Rana rulers from 1846 to 1950. In Nepal, wildlife lost whatever protection the royal hunting reserve conveyed ...
more
Royal Bardia National Park is situated in the mid far western Terai, east of the Karnali River, Nepal. The park is the largest and most undisturbed wilderness area in the Terai. About 70% of the park is covered with forest with the balance a mixture of grassland, savannah and riverine forest.
Bardia was a royal hunting reserve of Nepal's Rana rulers from 1846 to 1950. In Nepal, wildlife lost whatever protection the royal hunting reserve conveyed when the Rana rule ended in the 1950s. A well-meaning malaria eradication program in the 1950s and 1960s opened the terai for settlement, and transformed about 75% of the native Terai to agricultural land. Wildlife populations declined with the combination of increased settlement and widespread poaching. Bardia was declared a wildlife reserve in 1976, first measuring 134 square miles (347 km²) and expanded in 1985 to 374 square miles (968 km²), it became a National Park in 1988. The approximately 1500 people who used to live in this valley...
less