Bardiya National Parkबर्दिया राष्ट्रिय निकुञ्ज

Bardiya is the largest national park in the Terai at 968 km², a broad sweep of sal forest, grassland and the braided Karnali and Babai rivers below the Siwalik crest. Its lineage runs through three stages — a Royal Hunting Reserve set aside in 1969, the Royal Karnali Wildlife Reserve in 1976, and finally a national park in 1988 — a path that mirrors Nepal's shift from shikar reserve to strict protection.

Quieter than Chitwan, it has become Nepal's best park for tiger sightings, holding 125 Bengal tigers in the 2022 count — the second-highest national total — and forming, with neighbouring Banke, the roughly 2,231 km² Bardia-Banke Tiger Conservation Unit. It also shelters a translocated population of greater one-horned rhinos (38 in 2021), wild elephant, swamp deer (barasingha), gharial and the endangered Gangetic river dolphin in the Karnali, among 53-plus mammals and 407 birds.

The park's management story captures both loss and recovery: rhinos were moved here from Chitwan to seed a second population, the Babai-valley animals were wiped out by poaching during the 1996–2006 conflict, and security was painstakingly rebuilt afterwards. Today its dolphin stretches and the restored Babai valley are among the wildest corners of lowland Nepal.