Pragnya IAS · Chapter 6 of 15 · Species reserves
Elephant reserves in India map
Map Project Elephant’s reserves and the corridors between them, and see why the south and the northeast carry most of India’s elephants.
STUDY NOTE 1
Project Elephant, 1992
Project Elephant (1992) supports more than thirty elephant reserves across India’s elephant states. Singhbhum (Jharkhand) was the first, notified in 2001. Reserves are landscapes, not fenced parks — they include forests, villages and corridors.
STUDY NOTE 2
Two heavy blocks
The southern block — the Nilgiri–Eastern Ghats landscape across Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu — and the northeast block across Assam, Arunachal and Meghalaya carry most of India’s elephants. Smaller blocks lie in central India, the east and the Himalayan terai.
STUDY NOTE 3
Corridors are the exam theme
Elephants move seasonally between habitats along narrow corridors. Fragmentation of corridors — by railways, mines, canals and farms — drives human-elephant conflict, the standard Mains linkage for this map.
STUDY NOTE 4
A landscape idea
Unlike a national park, an elephant reserve has no separate legal category; it overlays existing protected areas and revenue forests. That is why the count of reserves and the count of parks never match.
Map reading activity
Shade the southern and northeast blocks. Draw one corridor arrow between two habitats and explain its role in two lines.
What does this elephant reserves of india lesson explain?
Project Elephant (1992) supports more than thirty elephant reserves across India’s elephant states. Singhbhum (Jharkhand) was the first, notified in 2001. Reserves are landscapes, not fenced parks — they include forests, villages and corridors.
UPSC map practice & Geography Optional connection
For UPSC Prelims environment questions and GS III, pair each protected area or convention site with its state, ecosystem and flagship species. Use a labelled sketch to show distribution; lists and counts change, so note the update date rather than memorising a frozen tally. These are Pragnya-authored exercises, not official UPSC previous-year questions.
References & original artwork
This lesson covers chapter 6 of the supplied reference curriculum. Pragnya IAS notes, activities and questions are independently authored; source PDF pages, branding, personal watermarks and unverified PYQs are not republished. India state geometry: geoBoundaries (CC BY 2.5 IN), simplified. These are educational concept views, not legal boundaries or official protected-area maps.