Let me take you in to a forest

Where winged creatures abide.

Listen to the mellow music 

As their voices fill the void.

Watch them fly into a forest rainbow

And up higher, as they fleet into the sky.

They’re the reason, the forest grows

Sprinkling little seeds amid leap-carpeted floors.

These birds have seen more than you’ve seen

And travelled farther than you’ve been.

These graceful creatures – wild and free

Deserve a feathered life like this;

For imagine, what would have happened

If Tigers were blessed with wings!

                                                         ~~~Words By Jovita Elveera Mendonca

As a way of preserving nature, many national parks are kept out of reach. If you love nature and want to explore more things about nature then must visit Dudhwa National Park. It is a very beautiful place to see some eye-catching beauty. Dudhwa national park is part of an amazing park system offering great access to the great outdoors and spend time with special once.

When you walk into the Dudhwa National Park, you’ll be welcomed by colorful birds that fill up the air with cheerful chirping and gleeful flapping. It houses over 500 bird species like the drongos, silver-bill munia, baya weaver, cattle egret, cinnamon bittern, kingfishers, falcons, kites, owls and pheasant-tailed jacana. You can also spot hundreds of migratory birds like the bar-headed geese, shell drakes, pochards, and tufted ducks during winters when the Dudhwa National Park transforms into a vast breeding ground. The North Kheri Forest Division, as the area in which the park is located was previously called, has the finest quality sal (Shorea robusta) in India. Dudhwa National Park, covering 190 sq miles (490 sq km) of grassland and woodland, consists, as mentioned earlier, mainly of sal forest.

It is a typical representative of the terai ecosystem. Dudhwa National Park, along with two other adjacent parks, the Kishanpur Wild Life Sanctuary, and Katerniaghat Wild Life Sanctuary is now named as the Dudhwa Tiger Reserve under the Project Tiger. These Wildlife Sanctuaries to represent the excellent natural forests and greenery along the Terai region. The Kishanpur Sanctuary lies in the Lakhimpur- Kheri, and Shahajahanpur districts in Uttar Pradesh. This region comes under the sub-Himalayan area called as Terai belt. This Terai region is acknowledged as the most endangered ecosystems throughout the world.
Dudhwa attracts the visitors with its two core area as Dudhwa National Park and Kishanpur Wildlife Sanctuary which are separated by each other with an area of 15 km agricultural land. The area of the Park is composed of a vast alluvial plain along the tributaries of Mohana and Suheli.

Make this unique experience your own with inspired jungle living at Dudhwa!

On my second trip to Dudhwa, I asked the locals and the natives of that place what is the meaning of Dudhwa. The answer I got – there was a big collection center of the cow milk (“Dudh” is a Hindi word which means milk). There were big-big grasslands across this Tarai (Terai) belt where the castles used to graze and the villagers had good Dudh (milk) produce. This is how the place called Dudhwa.

The Post-Independence era witnessed tremendous encroachment towards the Dudhwa jungle. As a result, the forest was converted in agricultural land. Additionally, due to its location on the Indo-Nepal border, the chances of poaching and hunting enhanced to a greater extent and the trading of the wild animals increased to a massive extent who sell their products in Nepal, which is a tourist place gives them a huge market for these things.

The story of the tiger reserve in Dudhwa is the story of the Billy Arjan Singh. A royal prince from the Kapurthala family, born in Gorakhpur Uttar Pradesh, Arjan Singh was an unstoppable hunter until one night when he experienced a Damascene conversion after shooting a leopard.

From that night, this royal brat was to be transformed into one of India’s greatest wildlife conservationists and wildlife author. He was the first who tried to reintroduce tigers and leopards from captivity into the wild. To fulfill his pledge of protecting the dwindling wild animals, Billy found a small place in the evergreen and swamp jungles of Dudhwa. He settled in a small hut (which was later transformed into a lodge) and lived there all his life. During the course of his life, he saved lots of wild animals, starting with a herd of Swamp Deer (Barasingha) on the Satiana side of the Dudhwa forest.

In 1968, Billy Arjan Singh, operating out of his farm in Kheri, which he christened ‘Tiger Haven’, began his battle to protect Dudhwa. His efforts resulted in an area of 212 sq. km. being declared as ‘Dudhwa Sanctuary’ in the same year. With protection, the habitat improved and soon people began to talk of the magic spell woven by nature, with help from Billy.

The area was established in 1958 as a wildlife sanctuary for swamp deer. With the tireless efforts of Arjan Singh, the forest was declared Dudhwa National Park in 1977. In 2006, he was awarded the high civilian honor of Padma Shri for his work towards protecting wild animals. In 1976, he was awarded the World Wildlife Fund’s Gold Medal, the WWF’s premier award, for his conservation work.