BUTTERFLYing at Anshi

The 340 square kilometer National park adjoins the Dandeli wildlife sanctuary and are together called Anshi-Dandeli Tiger reserve. It is situated in the North Western Ghats montane rain forests and moist deciduous forests eco-regions. The forest in this area was declared  Dandeli wildlife sanctuary in 1956. Subsequently, Anshi national park was carved out of this in 1987. Anshi and Dandeli were granted the status of Project Tiger sanctuaries in 2007.

The unique feature of the park is that the black panther are found here naturally. The forest area was known for its manganese in the past, the mining for which resulted in wildlife moving away from the forest. In the recent past, the mining has been stopped and various conservation activities and regeneration of the forests is resulting in the larger mammals slowly returning back.

October is not the season for visiting Anshi. I found that first hand :( . Filled with exhilaration of going to Anshi, close to my birth place Dandeli, I pumped up the expectations imagining a Jurassic park of birds. But the day we landed at Anshi town, we were welcomed by torrential rains typical to this region. Whether rains are to be expected in October in Anshi is beyond my knowledge, I simply went with the knowledge that rains stops at Dandeli in September.

Having had no private vehicles we dropped in at the Anshi range office who happily dropped us to the nature camp which is close to 3 km from the town. What followed the next 2 and half days were a gloomy weather that refused to budge filtering down a patchy sunlight for a few minutes at the most. The prospects of seeing animals was anyway low, but the birding front too diminished. We still trekked atleast 3 trek routes each day soaking up whatever the beautiful forests of Anshi had to offer, and we weren't disappointed. We did have manage to get a respectable number of the avians

We had fun finding the frogs. There are simply so many of them. Although we did photograph them, our knowledge of amphibians is too poor, we did only manage to distinguish the toads from the frogs :) However the catch of this trip were butterflies. We saw myriad butterflies; this being my first butterflying experience, after having prepared myself reading the Butterfly India mails and Isaac Kehimkar's book. I was simply spell bound by the sheer variety and beauty of the delicate darlings. We managed to Id most of what we saw and Ananth captured a handful of their timeless beauty in his camera. 

Anshi Bird and butterfly Checklist

We stayed at the deluxe tents, which was more luxury than I anticipated. The food was excellent, and the forest staff amiable. We walked the return 3km route to Anshi town with all our heavy luggage, to catch the tempo to Dandeli where our bus to Bangalore awaited us.  The walk through the forest was something I would always cherish, the sight of the rejuvenating forests. The attempt by the Dandeli forest department to restore these forests is really commendable. They have planted the endemic trees and bamboos and in time, I am sure the forests will rebound to its healthy state.


Some links:
http://www.dandeliwildlife.org/index.htm