INTRODUCTION

what is GHNP? where is it?

The Great Himalayan National Park (GHNP) was created to protect, sustain and propagate wildlife, under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. It took 20 years, from inception to inauguration, for the park to be realised as part of the Indian protected area network. It was constituted in 1984 and was formally notified as a national park in 1999. It is located in Banjaar Sub-Division of Kullu District of Himachal Pradesh, India, in the far Western Himalayas. GHNP is one of the most recent additions to a huge network of wildlife reserves found in Himalayan region in India and adjoining countries.

GHNP was awarded UNESCO World Heritage Site status in 2014, in recognition of its outstanding significance for biodiversity conservation. The park protects over 1,000 plant species, including many medicinal herbs, 31 mammal species and 209 bird species, as well as amphibians, reptiles and insects. Four of GHNP’s mammal species and three of its bird species are globally threatened, including the musk deer and the western horned tragopan.

The Great Himalayan National Park (GHNP) is at the junction of the world’s two major faunal realms – the Indomalayan to the south and the Palaearctic to the north.
The park’s temperate forest flora and fauna mark the westernmost limit of the Sino-Japanese region, and its high-altitude ecosystem has floral affinities with, amongst others, the Mediterranean, Tibetan and Cis-Himalayan regions

The Himalaya as a whole is listed as one of Conservation International’s 34 major biodiversity hotspots. The Himalaya Hotspot contains not only the world’s highest mountains and associated alpine ecosystems but also large expanses of lower-elevation temperate and subtropical forests and grasslands. It spans 3,000km east to west, and 300km to 500km north to south.
Hotspots are defined by various criteria, including the presence of high percentages of endemic plants and animals, and high biodiversity. GHNP easily fulfills these criteria, and is home to 832  & 386 number of floral and faunal species, respectively, which includes the rarest Himalayan blue poppy, the western tragopan and the Himalayan tahr.