HISTORY

According to the local villagers the name Kanha has come from Kanhar which is the local term of the clayey a 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

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 .                                                                                                 

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.