Dudhwa

Dudhwa National Park was established in 1977 in the state of Uttar Pradesh, next to the Nepalese border, and protects some 614 km² of terai, the belt of humid alluvial plain at the foot of the Himalaya. It is one of the few well-preserved fragments of that ecosystem left in India, after the mass conversion of the terai into farmland during the twentieth century.

The landscape combines sal forests, tall grasslands rising above four metres and seasonal wetlands. That mixture is what supports its characteristic wildlife: Dudhwa holds the largest population of barasingha, or swamp deer, of the terai subspecies, one of the most threatened in the world, whose survival depends directly on the conservation of those wet grasslands.

The park is also the setting of a historic reintroduction: in 1984 the Indian rhinoceros was returned to Dudhwa, extinct in Uttar Pradesh since the early twentieth century, with animals from Assam and Nepal, and the population has been consolidating ever since. The park's creation was driven in large part by Billy Arjan Singh, a conservationist who worked in the area for decades and who was also behind controversial experiments in reintroducing captive-reared tigers and leopards. Dudhwa forms part of India's tiger reserve network and is home to Asian elephant, sloth bear and a very rich wetland birdlife.