Place · sal forest & biosphere reserve · India
Similipal
Also known as Similipal, Simlipal, Mayurbhanj, black tiger
Two and a half thousand square kilometres of sal forest on the Mayurbhanj plateau, a tiger reserve and a biosphere reserve, and the catchment of a dozen rivers including the Budhabalanga. It holds the largest population of wild elephants in eastern India and a documented population of melanistic tigers found nowhere else.
- Function
- Landscape & environmental change
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 21.850, 86.330
Worth knowing
The Khadia, Santhal, Kolha and Mankirdia communities live in and around the forest, and the Mankirdia are among the last groups in India to have practised a semi-nomadic monkey-trapping livelihood. The black tigers are the result of a single gene variant in a small isolated population, which is what inbreeding looks like in a protected area.
Connections (1)
- In the same set asBhitarkanika
Similipal's sal forest is the catchment and Bhitarkanika's mangrove is the delta of the same drainage, three hundred kilometres apart. Between them they hold eastern India's largest elephant population, its only pseudo-melanistic tigers, the country's biggest saltwater crocodiles and the world's largest olive ridley rookery — and both are managed by the same forest department.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Simlipal National Park”. Odisha Forest Department Similipal management plans; Sagarkumar Mishra and others on pseudo-melanism in Similipal tigers, PNAS (2021).
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