Pench Tiger Reserve

Since 1992 Pench has been included under the umbrella of Project Tiger as the 19th Project Tiger Reserve. This Kipling country covers the Seoni and Chhindwara districts of Madhya Pradesh. The Pench tiger reserve is a dry deciduous forest of predominantly teak trees and as such supports a rich and diverse array of wildlife. These hills were once known as the Seoni forests and it was here that Kipling chose to locate his story of the wolf boy Mowgli.

Comprising of 758 sq. kms out of which a core area of 299 sq km is the National Park and 464 sq km the buffer area of southern Indian tropical moist deciduous forest mixed with tropical dry deciduous teak bearing forests and dry mixed deciduous forest. With the three types of forest a diversity of fauna abound within this natural system.

Tiger is the main cat species of the park present in good numbers and sightings have become increasingly common lately. Commonly seen wildlife is chital, sambhar, nilgai, wild boar, and jackal. Other wild animals found are leopard, sloth bear, wild dog, porcupine, jungle cat, fox, striped hyena, gaur, chowsingha and barking deer.

There are more than 170 species of birds including several migratory ones. Some of them are peafowl, junglefowl, crow pheasant, crimson-breasted barbet, red-vented bulbul, racket-tailed drongo, magpie robin, lesser whistling teal, pintail, shoveler, egret and herons.