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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.
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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 .
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