Pench

Pench National Park was established in 1975 and extends along both sides of the Pench River, on the border between the states of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, in central India. It protects some 758 km² of dry deciduous forest dominated by teak, with open grasslands and the Totladoh reservoir at its centre.

Its literary fame is considerable: the forests of this region inspired Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, written in 1894, and the nineteenth-century travellers' accounts of the area's wildlife are the background from which Shere Khan and the story's characters emerged. The park makes much of that association in its interpretation for visitors.

Ecologically it is one of the territories with the highest density of herbivores in India, which supports a healthy Bengal tiger population and one of the country's most important populations of dhole, the Asiatic wild dog, along with leopard, gaur, sloth bear and a birdlife of more than three hundred species. Pench forms part of the tiger reserve network of the Kanha-Pench landscape, and its management has emphasised maintaining corridors between protected areas, a decisive factor in a territory heavily fragmented by infrastructure.