Manas National Park

Manas National Park sits in the foothills of the eastern Himalaya in the Baksa and Chirang districts of western Assam, along the international boundary with Bhutan, where it adjoins the Royal Manas National Park. Named after the Manas River—itself named for the serpent goddess Manasa—the area was declared a wildlife sanctuary on 1 October 1928 over 360 square kilometres. It was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as a natural site in 1985 under the World Heritage Convention of 1972, on the basis of its outstanding biodiversity and scenic value. The Government of India brought it under Project Tiger in 1973, making Manas one of the original nine tiger reserves, and it was constituted a national park in 1990 under the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972. It was further recognised as a biosphere reserve in 1989 under UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Programme.

The park functions as the core of a layered conservation architecture, and the working practitioner must keep the overlapping designations distinct because each carries a separate legal and administrative regime. The national park notification under the Wild Life (Protection) Act prohibits grazing, hunting, and the removal of forest produce within the core area, with the highest level of statutory protection. The tiger reserve designation, administered under the same Act through the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) since the 2006 amendment, superimposes a core-buffer structure and a Tiger Conservation Plan. The biosphere reserve framework adds a transition zone permitting regulated human activity, while the World Heritage inscription subjects the property to periodic monitoring and reactive monitoring missions by UNESCO and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), its advisory body for natural sites.

A distinctive feature of Manas is its trans-boundary character, which links it to Royal Manas National Park in Bhutan to form a contiguous conservation landscape across an international frontier. The combined area constitutes one of the most important habitats in the eastern Himalayan biodiversity hotspot. The reserve spans the Terai-Bhabar grassland-forest mosaic, with alluvial grasslands, semi-evergreen forests, and the Manas-Beki river system creating a habitat gradient that supports an exceptional concentration of endangered species. Among them are several found almost nowhere else, including the pygmy hog (Porcula salvania), the world's smallest wild pig, for which Manas is the last secure wild population; the Bengal florican; the hispid hare; the golden langur; and the Assam roofed turtle.

The most consequential episode in the park's recent administrative history concerns its World Heritage status. Manas was placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger in 1992, following severe degradation during the Bodoland agitation, when armed insurgency, poaching, and the destruction of forest infrastructure decimated populations of rhinoceros and tiger and rendered large areas unmanageable. The Indian rhinoceros was effectively extirpated from the park during this period. After sustained restoration—including the reintroduction of rhinos under the Indian Rhino Vision 2020 programme, translocations from Kaziranga and Pobitora, and the strengthening of anti-poaching patrols by the Assam Forest Department in cooperation with the Bodoland Territorial Council—the World Heritage Committee removed Manas from the danger list in 2011 at its 35th session.

Manas is frequently conflated with its better-known neighbour Kaziranga National Park, but the two are distinct in ecology and emphasis. Kaziranga, a separate UNESCO site, holds the single largest population of the greater one-horned rhinoceros and is defined by its floodplain grasslands along the Brahmaputra; Manas is a foothill landscape with a greater forest component and a trans-boundary mandate. Manas should also be distinguished from a tiger reserve simpliciter: many Indian tiger reserves carry no World Heritage or biosphere status, whereas Manas holds all three plus an elephant reserve designation under Project Elephant. The park is likewise not to be confused with the broader Bodoland Territorial Region, the autonomous administrative entity under the Sixth Schedule within which much of the park lies.

Contemporary management raises edge cases that recur in examination and policy analysis. The co-management arrangement between the Assam Forest Department and the Bodoland Territorial Council illustrates the tension between centralised wildlife law and constitutional autonomy under the Sixth Schedule. Trans-boundary coordination with Bhutan, while a model of cooperative conservation, lacks a binding bilateral instrument and depends on memoranda and forester-level cooperation. Recurring controversies concern proposed hydroelectric and road infrastructure on the Bhutanese side of the Manas catchment, the periodic resurgence of poaching pressure on translocated rhinos, and grazing and encroachment in fringe villages. The IUCN World Heritage Outlook has assessed the site's conservation prospects as a matter of continuing concern, citing governance fragility.

For the civil-services aspirant and the working conservation officer, Manas is a compact case study in the full architecture of Indian and international environmental governance: a single property that simultaneously engages the Wild Life (Protection) Act, Project Tiger and the NTCA, Project Elephant, the World Heritage Convention, the Man and the Biosphere Programme, and the constitutional autonomy provisions of the Sixth Schedule. Its trajectory—from sanctuary to endangered World Heritage site and back to a recovering flagship—demonstrates both the vulnerability of protected areas to civil conflict and the capacity of coordinated institutional intervention to reverse degradation. It remains the definitive Indian example of multi-designation, trans-boundary conservation.