Protected Areas · 10 min read

The Shola National Parks of Munnar: Anamudi, Mathikettan and Pampadum

Three of the smallest national parks in India guard some of the last high-altitude shola forests of the Western Ghats. Together with Eravikulam, Chinnar and the Kurinjimala Sanctuary, they form a chain of protected islands around Munnar.

By GK Global, Adimali, Munnar · Trails & Tales by GK

Most national parks are famous for their size. The three shola national parks of Munnar are famous for being small. Anamudi Shola covers about 7.5 km², Mathikettan Shola about 12.8 km², and Pampadum Shola only about 1.3 km², making it one of the smallest national parks in India. Yet each protects something precious: a fragment of the ancient high-altitude forests that once covered far more of the hills around Munnar.

What is a shola?

A shola (from the Tamil solai, a grove) is a patch of stunted, evergreen forest that grows in the valleys and hollows of the highest hills of the southern Western Ghats, usually above about 1,700 m. The trees are short and gnarled, their branches hung with mosses, lichens, ferns and orchids. Sholas usually grow in a mosaic with open montane grassland, and the boundary between the two is often startlingly sharp.

Sholas are among the most valuable ecosystems in South India. They hold many plants and animals found nowhere else, including birds such as the white-bellied sholakili and the Palani laughingthrush, frogs, lizards and insects. They act as natural sponges, absorbing monsoon rain and releasing it slowly through the dry season, feeding streams and rivers that supply water to millions of people downstream. Over the last two centuries, a large proportion of the high-altitude sholas and grasslands of the Western Ghats has been converted to tea, timber plantations, farms and towns, or invaded by exotic trees.

The protected areas of Munnar

The three shola national parks were notified in 2003, as part of an effort to protect the remaining high-altitude forests around Munnar. They are managed by the Munnar Wildlife Division of the Kerala Forest and Wildlife Department, together with Eravikulam National Park, Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary and the Kurinjimala Sanctuary. Together with Tamil Nadu's protected areas in the Anamalai and Palani hills, they form part of a wider network of protected forest across the southern Western Ghats.

Anamudi Shola National Park

Anamudi Shola National Park, about 7.5 km², lies near Marayoor and Kanthalloor, on the drier eastern side of the hills north of Munnar. It is made up of three shola forests: Mannavan shola, Idivara shola and Pullardi shola. Mannavan shola is one of the largest shola forests in Kerala. The park shelters elephants, gaur, sambar, Nilgiri tahr, tigers, sloth bears, flying squirrels and, in the transition to the dry forests of Chinnar, the grizzled giant squirrel.

Mathikettan Shola National Park

Mathikettan Shola National Park, about 12.8 km², lies near Poopara and Santhanpara, east of Munnar, on the border with Tamil Nadu. The forest was first notified as a Reserve Forest by the Travancore government in 1897; part of it was later leased for cardamom cultivation. It was proposed as a national park in 2003 and finally declared in 2008, in part because it lies on an important elephant corridor linking the forests of the Munnar region with those of the Bodinayakkanur hills in Tamil Nadu. The name is often said to mean "the forest that confuses the mind", from local stories of people losing their way in its dense growth.

Mathikettan is surrounded by plantations and settlements, including the area around Chinnakanal and Anayirangal. Elephants moving between the forests often pass through these, one of the reasons for the human–elephant conflict in the area. (Read our articles on Arikkomban and human–wildlife conflict in Munnar.)

Pampadum Shola National Park

Pampadum Shola National Park, only about 1.3 km², lies near Vattavada on the road from Munnar beyond Top Station, at altitudes from about 1,900 m to more than 2,500 m. It is the smallest national park in Kerala. It lies on the border with Tamil Nadu, adjoining the forests of the Palani Hills around Kodaikanal. Despite its tiny size, it holds a remarkable range of shola plants and animals, including the rare Nilgiri marten, which has been studied here.

Kurinjimala Sanctuary

The Kurinjimala Sanctuary, about 32 km², was declared in 2006 to protect the habitat of the neelakurinji around Kottakamboor and Vattavada, near Pampadum Shola. Its creation followed a public campaign to save the blue-flowering kurinji from the spread of plantations. (Read our article on neelakurinji.)

Small parks, big challenges

Small protected areas face special challenges. They are easily affected by what happens around them: fire, grazing, invasive plants such as wattle and eucalyptus, roads, settlements and tourism. Animals that need large areas, such as elephants and tigers, must leave them to move between forests. The future of the shola parks depends on protecting the land between them, restoring grasslands and sholas that have been invaded by exotic trees, and maintaining corridors to the larger forests of Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

Ecologists have called for the high-altitude sholas and grasslands of the southern Western Ghats to be treated as a single landscape, with the Kerala parks and Tamil Nadu's Palani Hills protected areas managed together.