Guindy National Park Entrance: Image Source-Wikipedia

If you are a green enthusiast and care about urban green spaces, Guindy National Park is for you.It is a protected Reserve Forest right in the heart of Chennai. The main gate of this park is in a small lane next to the popular tourist destination: Guindy Snake park and Zoo, after IIT-M and Cancer Institute campus gates (from Adyar). It is an excellent change from the concrete urban jungle around us!.But don’t go there expecting to see tigers, panthers, elephants, or giraffes roaming all around you.It is more like an urban green belt.

Like all national parks today, the Guindy Park was originally a game reserve. It was in 1958 that the area of 400 hectares was handed to the Tamil Nadu Forest Department. Today the National Park has only 270.57 hectares.

The biodiversity within the Guindy National Park is quite amazing, despite the fact that it is a very small area surrounded by houses and habitation. The vegetation is mainly of the tropical dry evergreen type, and over 350 species of plants have been found including trees, shrubs, climbers, herbs and grasses. There are large numbers of Chital and Blackbuck that graze in the open grassland on the northern end of the park. Nocturnal animals include the toddy cat, civets, jungle cat, pangolin, and hedgehog. The dense forest, grasslands and water-bodies provide an ideal habitat for a large species of birds, some not seen anywhere else in Chennai. Apart from snakes, certain species of tortoise and turtles, lizards, geckos, chameleons and the common Indian monitor lizard are also found here.

Other than the Guindy National Park, the Arignar Anna Zoological Park , popularly known as the Vandalur Zoo (spread over a lush green forest area of about 510 hectares) also acts as a lung to the city.

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