Conservation in India is often discussed in terms of National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries — fenced-off areas where human activity is restricted or banned. The biosphere reserve model challenges this binary. It asks: what if the best way to protect nature is not to wall humans out, but to give them a sustainable stake in its preservation?

A biosphere reserve is a large, multi-use landscape that simultaneously serves three functions — conservation of biodiversity, support for sustainable economic development, and scientific research. It is, in UNESCO's own phrase, a 'living laboratory for sustainable development.'

This is the critical distinction. A National Park forbids. A biosphere reserve manages. A Wildlife Sanctuary protects a species; a biosphere reserve protects an entire functioning ecosystem — including the communities that have lived in and shaped it for generations.

The intellectual origin of biosphere reserves lies in a profound shift in how ecologists thought about nature in the 1960s. The dominant conservation model — keep humans out — was failing. Species were still going extinct even inside protected areas, because ecosystems do not respect park boundaries.

In 1971, UNESCO launched the Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme. Its premise was radical for its time: sustainable use and conservation are not opposites; they are preconditions of each other. No community that cannot eat will protect forests. No ecosystem that is merely fenced will survive climate change.

The MAB Programme established the World Network of Biosphere Reserves (WNBR). As of 2026, the network comprises 797 biosphere reserves across 145 countries, collectively covering roughly 5% of the Earth's land surface and supporting approximately 300 million people. They harbour more than 60% of the world's terrestrial vertebrate species richness.

India joined the programme and designated its first reserve — Nilgiri — in 1986. Today, India is one of the stronger participants in the global network.

The biosphere reserve model's most important design feature is its concentric three-zone structure. Think of it as a set of rings, each with its own rules and purposes.

 

The genius of this design is that it does not demand an all-or-nothing choice. Core zones get rigorous protection. Transition zones allow community life. Buffer zones serve as the negotiated middle ground where science and subsistence coexist.

Globally, the average area distribution is 18% core, 30% buffer, and 52% transition — reflecting the reality that most of a biosphere reserve is, in fact, a working landscape where people live and earn their livelihoods.

India has designated 18 biosphere reserves spread across its major ecosystems — from the high-altitude cold deserts of Himachal Pradesh to the mangrove swamps of the Sundarbans, from the marine wonderland of the Gulf of Mannar to the melanistic tigers of Odisha's Simlipal forests. Of these, 13 have received international recognition through inclusion in the UNESCO WNBR.

 

The Five Not on the UNESCO List

Five reserves — Manas (Assam), Dibru-Saikhowa (Assam), Dehang-Dibang (Arunachal Pradesh), Great Rann of Kutch (Gujarat), and Seshachalam (Andhra Pradesh) — are nationally designated but not yet recognised in the UNESCO WNBR. The process requires a formal nomination dossier submitted to UNESCO demonstrating the reserve's management framework, scientific value, and community engagement. The absence of any of these from the global network is less a judgment on biodiversity than on documentation and institutional capacity.

The institutional backbone for biosphere reserves in India is the Biodiversity Conservation Scheme, run by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC). The scheme funds activities like wildlife surveys, habitat management, eco-development, and community livelihood programmes. Implementation is handled by the respective State Forest Departments.

Funding follows a 60:40 Centre-to-State ratio for most states, and a more favourable 90:10 ratio for North-Eastern and Himalayan states, acknowledging both their ecological sensitivity and their limited financial capacity.

A notable recent initiative is the Integrated Management Plan (IMP) — a five-year planning framework that was piloted from 2022–23 in four reserves: Nanda Devi, Pachmarhi, Dehang-Dibang, and Agasthyamalai. IMPs are designed to bring coherence to the fragmented management of core, buffer, and transition zones, which are often administered by different agencies with no coordination mechanism.

The legal framework draws on the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, the Forest Rights Act, 2006, and the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986. However, unlike National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries, biosphere reserves do not have a standalone statute — they are designated by an executive notification under general environmental law, which makes their legal standing weaker than it should be.

Odisha's Simlipal Biosphere Reserve is not just Odisha's entry in a national inventory. It is one of the most ecologically significant — and most politically complex — protected areas in India.

Simlipal is located in the Mayurbhanj district of northern Odisha. It spans approximately 5,569 sq km and sits within the Mayurbhanj Elephant Reserve, which also covers Hadgarh Wildlife Sanctuary and Kuldiha Wildlife Sanctuary. The landscape is dominated by sal forests, moist deciduous hill forests, grasslands, and savannas, cut through by at least 12 rivers including the Budhabalanga. Two dramatic waterfalls — Barehipani (217 m) and Joranda (181 m) — lie within its boundaries.

Designated as a Tiger Reserve under Project Tiger in 1973, declared a wildlife sanctuary in 1979, and notified as a biosphere reserve in 1994, Simlipal was added to the UNESCO WNBR in 2009. It is the only UNESCO-recognised biosphere reserve in Odisha.

The Black Tigers of Simlipal — A Genetic Story

Simlipal is globally renowned for its melanistic (pseudo-melanistic) tigers — individuals whose coats appear predominantly black due to an expression of a recessive genetic trait. As of 2025, approximately 30 tigers inhabit the reserve. Strikingly, nearly 37% display this pseudo-melanistic pattern — a proportion seen nowhere else on Earth.

This is not a sign of good health. It is a warning signal. The high frequency of a recessive trait is a classic indicator of inbreeding due to genetic isolation. In 2014, only four tigers were recorded; most of today's population are descended from that bottleneck. To address this, in 2024, two female tigers were translocated from Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve (Maharashtra) to introduce genetic diversity into the population.

Simlipal Becomes Odisha's Second National Park (April 2025)

On 28 April 2025, the Odisha government formally notified part of the Simlipal Tiger Reserve as a National Park, making it the 107th National Park in India and the second National Park in Odisha after Bhitarkanika. The notified area covers 845.70 sq km — less than a third of the total reserve area — which reflects the difficulty of reconciling formal legal protection with the presence of approximately 10,000 people living across 61 villages within the broader forest landscape.

National Park status confers the highest level of legal protection under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. No human activity is permitted unless authorised by the Chief Wildlife Warden. Once notified, the boundaries cannot be altered by the state government without a recommendation from the National Board for Wildlife. However, tribal communities with rights recognised under the Forest Rights Act, 2006, may continue to live within the notified area — a tension that will test administrative ingenuity and constitutional fidelity over the coming years.

Challenges Specific to Simlipal

Several serious challenges continue to define Simlipal's management landscape:

Genetic isolation of tigers requires a long-term corridor strategy connecting Simlipal to nearby forest tracts.

Forest fires remain a perennial crisis — large fires in 2021 burned for more than two weeks, killing wildlife and devastating ground cover.

Forest Rights Act implementation is contested — tribal residents have raised concerns about forced relocation without proper recognition of their customary rights.

Cerebral malaria is endemic to the reserve area, posing risks to field staff and communities.

For all the policy elegance of the biosphere reserve concept, the ground reality raises uncomfortable questions.

Climate Change Is Rewriting the Rules

Studies project that up to 40% of India's biosphere reserves could face significantly more extreme climate events by 2050. Mountain reserves like Nanda Devi and Cold Desert are particularly exposed — glacial retreat is shrinking water sources that entire ecosystems depend on. Coastal reserves like Sundarbans and Gulf of Mannar face rising sea levels and intensifying cyclones. The irony is that biosphere reserves, designed to absorb climate variability, are themselves becoming climate casualties.

Invasive Species — The Silent Colonisers

Lantana camara, an invasive shrub introduced by the British as an ornamental plant, has colonised vast stretches of buffer and transition zones across India's biosphere reserves. It suppresses native understorey vegetation, alters fire behaviour, and displaces browse plants that herbivores depend on. In the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, a creative intervention turned this into an opportunity: indigenous Irula and Kurumba communities have been trained to harvest removed Lantana and convert it into furniture, sculptures, and handicrafts. In 2021, 125 life-sized elephant sculptures crafted from Nilgiri Lantana were displayed in London — an exercise in global storytelling as much as conservation.

The Governance Fragmentation Problem

A biosphere reserve's core zone might fall under the Forest Department, the buffer zone under a different division, and the transition zone under the Revenue and Panchayati Raj departments — with no single authority coordinating their actions. The Integrated Management Plan initiative attempts to address this, but five years is not enough to rewire decades of siloed governance.

Weak Legal Status

Unlike National Parks, which are notified under a specific provision of the Wildlife Protection Act, biosphere reserves in India have no dedicated statutory backing. This means that in any conflict between a mining lease, highway project, or dam and a biosphere reserve's buffer or transition zone, the reserve has limited legal recourse. A dedicated Biosphere Reserve Act — something several conservationists have advocated — would change this calculus significantly.

Enact a Biosphere Reserve Act to give statutory recognition comparable to National Parks and create an independent National Biosphere Reserve Authority for coordinated oversight.

Fast-track UNESCO nominations for the five non-listed reserves (Manas, Dibru-Saikhowa, Dehang-Dibang, Great Rann of Kutch, Seshachalam) through improved management documentation and biodiversity data collection.

Expand the Integrated Management Plan model from the pilot four reserves to all 18, with mandatory inter-departmental coordination committees at the district level.

Mainstream Forest Rights Act compliance within biosphere reserve management — the exclusion of communities is both legally questionable and ecologically counterproductive.

Develop green livelihood corridors in transition zones — scaling up models like the Nilgiri Lantana handicraft initiative to demonstrate that biosphere reserves generate income, not just restrict it.

Prepare Climate Vulnerability Assessments for all 18 reserves and integrate adaptation strategies into the Integrated Management Plans.

Strengthen genetic monitoring programmes for isolated predator populations — the Simlipal tiger case has national lessons for other reserves with genetically restricted populations.

3 November is observed as the International Day for Biosphere Reserves globally.

UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme was launched in 1971; World Network of Biosphere Reserves (WNBR) emerged from it.

Global WNBR (2026): 797 biosphere reserves across 145 countries.

India: 18 designated biosphere reserves; 13 are UNESCO WNBR members.

India's first biosphere reserve: Nilgiri (1986); first UNESCO recognition in 2000.

Largest biosphere reserve in India: Great Rann of Kutch, Gujarat (12,454 sq km).

Smallest biosphere reserve: Dibru-Saikhowa, Assam (765 sq km).

Most recent UNESCO addition: Cold Desert, Himachal Pradesh (2025).

Simlipal, Odisha: UNESCO WNBR since 2009; notified as 107th National Park of India (2nd in Odisha) on 28 April 2025; 845.70 sq km notified area.

Funding ratio: Centre-State 60:40 for most states; 90:10 for NE and Himalayan states.

Five reserves not in UNESCO WNBR: Manas, Dibru-Saikhowa, Dehang-Dibang, Great Rann of Kutch, Seshachalam.