Place · tiger reserve & tribal landscape · India
Simlipal Biosphere
Also known as Similipal
Simlipal, 2,750 square kilometres of sal forest and plateau in the Mayurbhanj district of northern Odisha, is one of India's nine original Project Tiger reserves (1973) and a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. The forest holds the melanistic black tigers endemic to this landscape, the Mayurbhanj elephant population, Barehipani and Joranda waterfalls — among the highest in India — and the Ho and Santal villages whose shifting cultivation and sacred groves have shaped the plateau for a thousand years. The former Bhanja kings of Mayurbhanj hunted here from the Belgadia Palace at Baripada; the modern reserve has absorbed 61 of their old villages inside its core.
- Function
- Landscape & environmental change
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 21.633, 86.333
Connections (1)
- Site adjacencyBalasore (Baleshwar)
Simlipal Biosphere in Mayurbhanj district sits in the north-eastern corner of Odisha, with its principal access points at Pithabata and Jashipur gates on the Baripada-Keonjhar road and its coastal spill-over through Balasore district on the Subarnarekha delta. Balasore (Baleshwar) was the colonial port town and the inland supply head for the Mayurbhanj kings' hunting establishment in Simlipal through the nineteenth century. The Bhanja royal palace at Baripada, the Chau dance of Mayurbhanj and the ancient Jagannath temple at Baripada are the cultural landscape in which Simlipal sits.
Sources
Standard reference.
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