GUWAHATI: The Assam government on Wednesday notified Dihing Patkai as a national park, the second in a week.
The 422 sqkm-Raimona National Park in western Assam’s Kokrajhar district, was the first to be notified.
With seven, Assam now has the third most national parks after 12 in Madhya Pradesh and nine in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, forest officials said.
Kaziranga, Manas, Nameri, Orang and Dibru-Saikhowa are the other parks in the state.
Spread over 234.26 sqkm, the Dihing Patkai, located in eastern Assam’s Dibrugarh and Tinsukia districts, is a major elephant habitat and 310 butterfly species.
The park has 47 species each of reptiles and mammals, including the tiger and clouded leopard, and spreads across the coal and oil-rich districts of Upper Assam.
The newly created national park will be a contiguous stretch of forests from the Upper Dihing Reserve Forests in the East (under Digboi division, Tinsukia district) to the Jeypore RF (under Dibrugarh division, Dibrugarh district) and include some pristine forests along the Assam-Arunachal interstate boundary classified as the Assam Valley Tropical Wet Evergreen Forests.
The erstwhile Dehing Patkai Wildlife Sanctuary, the Jeypore Reserve Forest and the western block of the Upper Dihing Reserve Forest have also been included in the new notification.
The national park was in the news last year for illegal coal mining in the surrounding areas.
The Justice BP Katakey Commission, appointed to inquire into the allegations of illegal coal mining activities in and around Dihing Patkai, submitted its report to the Assam government recently.
While the first proposal to accord the national park status to the region dates back to 1995, Dehing Patkai was declared a wildlife sanctuary in 2004.
The Sarbananda Sonowal government in July last year had decided to upgrade the Dehing Patkai Wildlife Sanctuary to a national park.
“The forest village area diverted under the Forest Conservation Act has been excluded.
Short stretches of the Dirak and Buri Dihing rivers have been included in the park,” state environment and forest minister Parimal Suklabaidya said.
The park will be administered by the Soraipung Range of Digboi forest division and Jeypore range of Dibrugarh forest division.
Additional anti-poaching camps and manpower are being provided for patrolling and conservation, the minister said.