According to the local villagers the name Kanha has come from Kanhar which is the local term of the clayey soil found in that region.

The second thought from the locals of Kanha is that the name is derived from Kanva, a holy man who lived in a forest village.

Very little is known about the Kanha before the middle of the nineteenth century. Probably the slash-and-burn cultivation methods of the Biaga and Gond indigenous peoples stretched back for centuries. According to the former field director HS Panwar, who surveyed the park’s history in his handbook to Kanha , the first forest management rules were instituted in 1862, when cutting of various tree species without the official authorization was prohibited. The first extensive natural history notes about the area come from this period, in the form of Captin J, Forsyth’s classic “ The Highland of Central India” .  From about 1865, an area in the current park’s western block was officially classified as the Banjar Valley Reserve Forest. In the 1890s, this region of Madhya Pradesh, then called the Central Provinces , was setting for Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book stories.

1933, the Kanha area was declared a sanctuary. The same status of accorded in the eastern sector to Supkhar in 1935, but within a few years the protection for wildlife in this area was ended, due to damage caused by the animals to Sal saplings, crops, and livestock. Over the next twenty years shooting of deer and tigers was periodically allowed. In 1955, however, the concern about the depletion of tiger numbers resulted in the official designation of Kanha as a national park in India .

In 1970, the park began a long term and ultimately a successful effort to rescue the hard ground barasingha (Cervus duvauceli branderi) from extinction. And in 1973 Kanha was designated as one of the original nine reserves under Projest Tiger.

The two most important factors in Kanha’s rise to pre-eminent position in the network of protected areas in India India have undoubtedly been its record in tiger conservation and its role in saving the barasingha. Over the past decade the population of Tigers in Kanha has been around 100.