Background: Manas, the other Assam wildlife property on the World Heritage List

Background

Kaziranga's season reopening draws attention to the fact that Assam holds a second wildlife property on the World Heritage List, namely Manas Wildlife Sanctuary. Manas covers 39,100 hectares in north-east India and takes its name from the Manas river, part of the Manas-Beki river system. It lies in the Eastern Himalayas and shares its northern edge with Bhutan, so the protected landscape continues across an international boundary. The listing uses three criteria, seven, nine and ten, which cover natural beauty, ecological processes and threatened species together. Two endemic animals are central to its value, the pygmy hog and the golden langur, both found in this region and nowhere else. The sanctuary also holds the tiger, the greater one-horned rhinoceros and the Bengal florican. Between them Kaziranga and Manas give Assam two natural World Heritage properties, which is the point worth remembering.