Kaziranga

Made a forest reserve in 1905 on the initiative of Mary Curzon, wife of the British Viceroy of India, after she visited the area and failed to see a single one of the rhinos she had been told about, which alarmed her into fearing they might die out. It became a national park in 1974 and now protects close to 70% of the world population of the Indian one-horned rhinoceros, as well as holding the highest density of Bengal tigers per square kilometre of any protected area on the planet. The annual floods of the Brahmaputra River, far from being a threat, renew the fertility of its elephant grasslands each year, a natural cycle the park's whole food chain depends on.