The Union Minister of State for Environment, Forest and Climate Change has recently proposed to change the name of Corbett National Park to Ramganga National Park.

Who was Jim Corbett?

• Born in Nainital in 1875, Edward James Corbett lived in India till Independence, after which he left for Kenya where he died in 1955.
• India’s best known hunter, Corbett earned fame after he tracked down and killed a number of man-eating tigers and leopards (he is said to have killed over a dozen).
• An ace shot, Corbett was called upon regularly by the government to track and shoot man-eaters in the villages of Garhwal and Kumaon in Uttarakhand.

Corbett National Park

• Jim Corbett National Park is a national park in India located in the Nainital district of Uttarakhand state.
• The first national park in India, it was established in 1936 during the British Raj and named Haily National Park after a governor of the United Provinces in which it was then located.
• It was renamed Ramganga National Park, named after the river that flows through it, shortly after Independence and was rechristened yet again as Corbett National Park in 1956.
• Jim Corbett had played a leading role in its establishment and had died the year before.
• The park was the first to come under the Project Tiger initiative.

The tiger reserve

• The national park along with the neighbouring 301-sq km-Sonanadi Wildlife Sanctuary together make the critical tiger habitat of the Corbett Tiger Reserve.
• With its hills, grasslands and streams, it is ideal tiger territory.
• The place from where Project Tiger was launched in 1973, with its tiger population at 163, it boasts of a single largest tiger population in a tiger reserve and one of the highest tiger densities in the country.

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