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Silent Valley National Park :India February 15, 2006

The Silent Valley National Park is located in the Kundali Hills in Kerala, along the hill ranges known as the Western Ghats. The Silent Valley is considered to be the last pristine region of tropical evergreen forest in India and is an area rich in biodiversity. The lush tropical greenery, undulating slopes, hills and rivers make the Silent Valley National Park a beautiful wildlife tourism destination in Kerala, India. The park is also known for the rare and unique herbs and plants that grow here, as well as the wildlife found in the Silent Valley, which include elephants, tigers and lion-tailed macaques.

Silent Valley National Park is situated in the Palakkad district of Kerala. Silent Valley in Kerala is considered India’s last area of tropical evergreen rain forest and is a precious biodiversity resource, which you can visit on tours with Kerala Backwater. Threatened by the construction of a dam across the Kunti River, which flows out of Silent Valley National Park, during the 1970’s, Silent Valley was rescued as a result of an agitation by environmentalists and conservationists in Kerala.

Silent Valley has a very eventful history in comparison to the other wildlife parks in the country. The local name for the park is Sairandhrivanam (the forest in the valley) and had been a centre of hot debates and protests in the decades of the 70’s and 80’s of the 20th century. The history of the park goes way back to 1888 when the region was declared a reserved land under the Forest Act and later notified as a Reserved Forest by the Government of Madras in 1914.

The Silent Valley National Park has an area of 90 sq km is located in the north eastern corner of the district. It rises abruptly to the Nilgiri Plateau in the north and overlooks the plains of Mannarkkad in the south.

The park became the focal point of India’s s fiercest environmental debate in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the Kerala State Electricity Board decided to build a dam across the river Kunthi which runs through the valley. Since then a long-term conservation effort has been undertaken to preserve the Silent Valley ecosystem.

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