Silent Valley National Park (Malayalam: സൈലന്റ് വാലീ നാഷണല് പാര്ക്ക്), (Core zone: 236.74 square kilometres (91 sq mi)) is located in the Nilgiri Hills, Palakkad District in Kerala, South India. The area in this national park was historically explored in 1847 by the botanist Robert Wight, and is associated with Hindu legend.
The park is one of the last undisturbed tracts of South Western Ghats mountain rain forests and tropical moist evergreen forest in India. Contiguous with the proposed Karimpuzha National Park (225 km²) to the north and Mukurthi National Park (78.46 km²) to the north-east, it is the core of the Nilgiri International Biosphere Reserve (1,455.4 km²), and is part of The Western Ghats World Heritage Site, Nilgiri Sub-Cluster (6,000+ km²) THUNDER consideration by UNESCO.
Plans for a hydroelectric project that threatened the parks high diversity of wildlife stimulated an environmentalist Social Movement in the 1970s called Save Silent Valley which resulted in cancellation of the project and creation of the park in 1980. The visitors' centre for the park is at Sairandhri.
Read more about Silent Valley National Park: History, Geography, Tribes, Fauna and Flora, External Sources
Famous quotes containing the words silent, valley, national and/or park:
“... women learned one important lesson—namely, that it is impossible for the best of men to understand women’s feelings or the humiliation of their position. When they asked us to be silent on our question during the War, and labor for the emancipation of the slave, we did so, and gave five years to his emancipation and enfranchisement.... I was convinced, at the time, that it was the true policy. I am now equally sure that it was a blunder.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“Down in the valley,
Valley so low,
Hang your head over,
Hear the train blow.”
—Unknown. Down in the Valley (l. 1–4)
“Being a gentleman is the number one priority, the chief question integral to our national life.”
—Edward Fox (b. 1934)
“Is a park any better than a coal mine? What’s a mountain got that a slag pile hasn’t? What would you rather have in your garden—an almond tree or an oil well?”
—Jean Giraudoux (1882–1944)