Pakke Tiger Reserve

About Pakke Tiger Reserve

Pakke Tiger Reserve, in Arunachal Pradesh's East Kameng district, covers 862 sq km of largely unbroken tropical and subtropical forest along the foothills of the eastern Himalaya. Beyond its status as a tiger reserve, Pakke has become nationally known as one of India's leading hornbill conservation sites, home to three species: the wreathed hornbill, the great hornbill, and the oriental pied hornbill, with wreathed hornbill recorded at the highest density of the three. Pakke's hornbill conservation work is built around its Hornbill Nest Adoption Programme, an initiative that pairs local Nyishi community members, many of them former hunters, with individual hornbill nest sites to monitor and protect them through the breeding season. The programme won the India Biodiversity Award in 2016 and is widely cited as a model for community-led conservation in Northeast India, turning traditional ecological knowledge into an active protection role rather than treating local communities as external to the reserve. The reserve's overall biodiversity is substantial for its size: more than 2,000 recorded plant species, around 300 bird species, 40 mammal species, 30 amphibian species, and 36 reptile species. Beyond the tiger and hornbills, the reserve supports elephant, leopard, clouded leopard, and a range of primates typical of the eastern Himalayan foothill forest. Pakke is one of the more accessible tiger reserves in Arunachal Pradesh, reachable from Seijosa town, and its combination of tiger-reserve status with a genuinely distinctive, community-driven hornbill programme makes it a strong pairing for visitors already travelling toward Arunachal's better-known Eaglenest and Namdapha wildlife circuits.