UNESCO Natural World Heritage Site of India

Which Natural Heritage site of India should you first visit?

Mayachh
Incredible Bharat
7 min readOct 9, 2021

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India is a nation of vast diversity, so the world remembers it to be the most Diverse Nation. United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has perceived a few spots in India which are of particular social features like geographical arrangements, physical, natural, and social scenes.

1. Kaziranga National Park:

Photo by Subhajit Gupta on Unsplash

State: Assam

In the core of Assam, this park is one of the last regions in eastern India undisturbed by a human presence.

It is occupied by the world’s biggest populace of one-horned rhinoceroses, just as numerous warm-blooded animals, including tigers, elephants, pumas and bears, and a great many birds.

  • It is the single largest undisturbed and representative area in the Brahmaputra Valley floodplain.
  • The Park’s contribution to saving the Indian one-horned rhinoceros from the edge of eradication at the turn of the twentieth century to holding onto the single biggest populace of this species is a stupendous preservation accomplishment.
  • The Park has recorded one of the greatest populations of tigers in the nation and has been proclaimed a Tiger Reserve starting around 2007.
  • The recreation center’s area at the intersection of the Australasia and Indo-Asian flyway implies that the Park wetlands assume a vital part for the protection of globally threatened migratory bird species.
  • The Endangered Ganges dolphin is likewise found in a portion of the closed oxbow lakes.

Date of Inscription: 1985

Area: 42,996 ha

2. Keoladeo National Park:

Photo by Ajay Kumar Jana on Unsplash

State: Rajasthan

It is a significant wintering ground of Palaearctic transitory waterfowl and is eminent for its huge gathering of non-transient inhabitant reproducing birds.

A green natural life desert spring arranged inside a populated human-overwhelmed scene, about 375 bird species and an assorted cluster of other living things have been recorded in this mosaic of fields, forests, forest bogs, and wetlands.

  • Once a shooting ground at the end of the 19th Century, the area was declared a national park in 1982, its continued existence is dependent on a regulated water supply from a reservoir outside the park boundary.
  • Because of its strategic location in Central Asian transient flyway and presence of water, enormous assemblages of ducks, geese, pelicans, and waders show up in the colder time of year.
  • The Park is the just known wintering site of the focal populace of the fundamentally imperiled Siberian Crane.
  • Furthermore, fills in as a wintering region for others all around the world, undermined species like the Greater Spotted Eagle and Imperial Eagle.
  • During the reproducing season the most fabulous heronry in the district is shaped by 15 types of herons, ibis, cormorants, spoonbills, and storks, wherein a very much overflowed year more than 20,000 birds home.

Area: 2,873 ha

Date of Inscription: 1985

3. Manas Wildlife Sanctuary:

Photo by Jeremy Bezanger on Unsplash

State: Assam

The Manas Wildlife Sanctuary lies close by the moving waterway channels of the Manas River and is part of the core zone of the 283,700 hectares Manas Tiger Reserve.

  • The site gives basic and suitable natural surroundings to uncommon and jeopardized species, including tiger, more noteworthy one-horned rhino, swamp deer, pygmy hog, and Bengal florican.
  • Manas is located at the foothills of the Eastern Himalayas, with the northern boundary of the park is contiguous to the international border of Bhutan, manifested by the imposing Bhutan hills.
  • The Manas Wildlife Sanctuary provides a habitat for 22 of India’s most threatened species of mammals. In total, there are nearly 60 mammal species, 42 reptile species, 7 amphibians, and 500 species of birds, of which 26 are globally threatened.
  • Elephant, tiger, greater one-horned rhino, clouded leopard, sloth bear, wild buffalo, pygmy hog, and golden langur are some of the species which will be found in Manas Wildlife Sanctuary.

Area: 39,100 ha

Date of Inscription: 1985

4. Sundarbans National Park:

Photo by Ranae Smith on Unsplash

State: West Bengal

The Sundarbans is the largest area of mangrove forest in the world and the only one that is inhabited by the tiger.

  • More than half of it is in India, the rest is in Bangladesh.
  • It is situated in the Ganges Delta.
  • The mangrove environment upholds the single biggest populace of tigers on the planet which have adjusted to both land and/or water capable life, being equipped for swimming for significant distances and benefiting from fish, crab, and water-screen reptiles.
  • Tigers here are additionally prestigious for being “man-eaters”, most presumably due to their somewhat high recurrence of experiences with neighborhood individuals.
  • The land region in the Sundarbans is continually being changed, formed, and molded by the activity of the tides, with erosion measures more noticeable along estuaries.
  • Its job as a wetland nursery for marine living beings and as a climatic cushion against typhoons is a one-of-a-kind normal cycle.

Area: 133,010 ha

Date of Inscription: 1987

5. Nanda Devi and Valley of Flowers National Parks:

Photo by Yomex Owo on Unsplash

State: Uttarakhand

  • This lavishly assorted region is home to uncommon and jeopardized creatures, including the Asiatic wild bear, snow panther, earthy colored bear and blue sheep.
  • The delicate scene of the Valley of Flowers National Park supplements the rough mountain wild of Nanda Devi National Park.
  • Together they include a special change zone between the mountain slopes of the Zanskar and Great Himalaya, applauded by mountain climbers and botanists for longer than a century and in Hindu folklore for significantly longer.
  • Nanda Devi National Park is dominated by the 7,817 m peak of Nanda Devi, India’s second-highest mountain, which is approached through the Rishi Ganga gorge, one of the deepest in the world.
  • The Valley of Flowers National Park, with its gentler landscape, breathtakingly beautiful meadows of alpine flowers, and ease of access, complements the rugged, inaccessible, high mountain wilderness of Nanda Devi.
  • Both parks contain high diversity and density of flora and fauna of the west Himalayan biogeographic zone, with significant populations of globally threatened species including the snow leopard, Himalayan musk deer, and numerous plant species.
  • Both the parks were neglected until the 1930s and have not been exposed to anthropogenic tensions beginning around 1983 except for some very much managed local area-based ecotourism to little divides of the parks.
  • Hence, both the parks contain somewhat undisturbed normal environments that currently go about as control destinations for the continuation of regular cycles.

Area: 71,210 ha

Date of Inscription: 1988

Extension: 2005

6. Western Ghats:

Photo by Aayushmaan Sharma on Unsplash

State: South India

More seasoned than the Himalaya mountains, the mountain chain of the Western Ghats addresses geomorphic components of colossal significance with novel biophysical and biological cycles.

  • The site’s high montane timberland environments impact the Indian rainstorm climate design.
  • Directing the heat and humidity of the area, the site presents perhaps the best illustration of the rainstorm framework in the world.
  • It likewise has an uncommonly undeniable degree of natural variety and endemism and is perceived as one of the world’s eight ‘hottest hotspots’ of biological diversity.
  • The forests of the site include some of the best representatives of non-equatorial tropical evergreen forests anywhere and are home to at least 325 globally threatened flora, fauna, bird, amphibian, reptile and fish species.
  • A chain of mountains running parallel to India’s western coast, approximately 30–50 km inland, the Ghats traverse the States of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra, and Gujarat.
  • These mountains cover an area of around 140,000 km² in a 1,600 km long stretch that is interrupted only by the 30 km Palghat Gap at around 11°N.

Area: 795,315 ha

Date of Inscription: 2012

7. Great Himalayan National Park Conservation Area:

Photo by Teddy Hartanto on Unsplash

State: Himachal Pradesh

The Great Himalayan National Park Conservation Area encompasses the catchments of water supplies that are vital to millions of downstream users.

  • The property lies within the ecologically distinct Western Himalayas at the junction between two of the world’s major biogeographic realms, the Palearctic and Indomalayan Realms.
  • The Great Himalayan National Park Conservation Area provides habitat for 4 globally threatened mammals, 3 globally threatened birds, and numerous medicinal plants.
  • The diversity of species present is rich; however, it is the abundance and health of individual species’ populations supported by healthy ecosystem processes where the Great Himalayan National Park Conservation Area demonstrates its outstanding significance for biodiversity conservation.

Area: 90,540 ha

Date of Inscription: 2014

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Mayachh
Incredible Bharat

Crypto and Law enthusiast and avid reader of Indian Culture.