The name ‘Chitwan’ has several possible meanings, but the most literal translation of the two NEPALI words that make it up: chit or chita (heart) and wan or ban (jungle). Chitwan is thus ‘the heart of the jungle’.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, cultivation in the valley was deliberately prohibited by the government of Nepal in order to maintain a barrier of disease-ridden forests as a defense against the invasion of diseases from the south. Then for the century between 1846 and 1950, when the Rana Prime ministers were de facto rulers of Nepal, Chitwan was declared a private hunting reserve, maintained exclusively for the privileged classes. Penalties for poaching were severe - capital punishment for killing rhino - and the wildlife in the area thus received a measure of protection.

From time to time great hunts for rhino were held during the cool, mosquito-free winter months from December to February. The Ranas invited royalty from Europe and the Princely States of India, as well as other foreign dignitaries, to take part in these grand maneuvers, which were organized on a magnificent scale, often with several hundred leopards.

Then, in 1950, everything began to change. A popular revolt by the people of Nepal brought about the collapse of the Rana regime, and with it the end of the big hunts. In the hills the economic situation had been deteriorating for several decades. The population grew so fast that people ran out of land on which to grow crops. In desperation, the land-hungry farmers began to venture down into the plains, the new government felt obliged to open Chitwan for settlement.

An agricultural development program was started and thousands of hill people poured into the valley in search of land. A malaria-eradication scheme launched by the Government and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in 1954 proved so successful that the whole district was declared malaria-free in 1960.

All this was progress of a kind. But the human influx was so vast and so rapid that inevitably it had a disastrous effect on the wildlife habitat. Poaching became rampant, and little was done to control it. The main target was rhino, whose horn - renowned for its alleged medicinal properties - already commanded enormous prices in the drugstores of the East.

By the end of the 1950s it was clear that if such a decline continued, the rhino and other animals would soon face extinction. Already the swamp deer and the water buffalo had almost disappeared from Chitwan. Therefore, in 1959, the Fauna Preservation Society appointed the distinguished British naturalist E. P. Gee to make a survey. Gee, who had spent most of his life in India and was an authority on its wildlife recommended the creation of a national park north of the Rapti river, and this was duly established in 1961. He also proposed a wildlife sanctuary to the south of the river for a trial period of ten years. After he had surveyed Chitwan again in 1963, this time both the Fauna Preservation Society and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, he recommended an extension of the national park to include areas of rhino country in the south.

In 1963 a government committee investigated the legal status of immigrants in the Chitwan valley; the Land Settlement Commission of 1964 resettled 22,000 people, including 4,000 from inside the rhino sanctuary, elsewhere in the valley. Drastic though it was, the operation brought little immediate improvement, for the people who had been evicted poured back into the area to collect firewood and fodder; the habitat deteriorated still further, and the rhino population continued to decline. A survey carried out in June 1968 estimated that only a total of between eighty-one and 108 rhinos were left. The report, published in 1969, predicted that unless total protection was afforded, the rhino would disappear by 1980.

In December 1970, His late Majesty King Mahendra approved the establishment of the national park south of the Rapti river. The boundaries were delineated in March and April of 1971, and preliminary development began in October that year. Royal Chitwan National Park was officially gazetted in 1973 by His Majesty King Birendra and became the first national park in Nepal.

At the time of Royal Chitwan National Park establishment, the park covered 328 square Kilometers. After an extension in 1980 & 1986, it now covers 932 square Kilometers and contains a wide variety of habitats, from the grassland and riverine forests of the valleys to the sal forest on the hills and the chir pine that grows along the ridges.

The Royal Chitwan National Park which stand today as successful testimony of nature conservation in South Asia. This is the first National Park of Nepal established in 1973 to preserve a unique Eco system significantly valuable to the whole world. The Park covering the protected area of 932 Sq. Km. is situated in the subtropical inner Terai lowlands of southern central part of Nepal. The Park gained much wider recognition in the world when UNESCO included this area on the list of World Heritage Site in 1984. It should also be emphasized that only a very small part of the national park is used for tourism. The great majority of the land, particularly in the hills, remains unvisited and therefore undisturbed. This is ideal for wildlife, and also preserves an element of mystery for humans; because large areas are still unexplored, our knowledge of what birds and animals the park contains is by no means finalized, and there is always the possibility of making new discoveries.