National parks in India are IUCN (International Union of Conservation of Nature) category II protected areas. India's first national park was established in 1936, now known as Jim Corbett National Park, in Uttarakhand. By 1970, India only had five national parks. In 1972, India enacted the Wildlife Protection Act and Project Tiger in 1973 to safeguard the habitats of conservation reliant species. Now there are 106 national parks in India. Further federal legislation strengthening protection for wildlife was introduced in the 1980s. There are 106 existing national parks in India covering an area of , which is 1.35% of the geographical area of the country (National Wildlife Database, Dec. 2020). In addition to the above, 75 other National Parks covering an area of are proposed in the Protected Area Network Report. The network of parks will go up 176 after full implementation of the above report. Hemis National Park is largest national park with an area 4,400 km² of while South Button Island National Park is smallest with an area of just 5.19 km². Definition According to the Indian Ministry of Environment & Forests, a national park is "[a]n area, whether within a sanctuary or not, [that] can be notified by the state government to be constituted as a National Park, by reason of its ecological, faunal, floral, geomorphological, or zoological association or importance, needed to for the purpose of protecting & propagating or developing wildlife there in or its environment. No human activity is permitted inside the national park except for the ones permitted by the Chief Wildlife Warden of the state under the conditions given in CHAPTER IV, WPA 1972". Overview Map { "type": "ExternalData", "service": "geoshape", "properties": { "stroke": "#f00f00", "stroke-width": 1 }, "query": "\nSELECT ?id ?idLabel (concat('', ?idLabel, '') as ?title) WHERE\n{\n?id wdt:P31 wd:Q46169. # is a road\n ?id wdt:P17 wd:Q668 . # in India\n\nSERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language 'en'.\n?id rdfs:label ?idLabel .\n}\n}"} State wise list Source : Andaman and Nicobar Islands Andhra Pradesh Arunachal Pradesh Assam Bihar Chhattisgarh Goa Gujarat Haryana Himachal Pradesh Jammu and Kashmir Jharkhand Karnataka Kerala Ladakh Madhya Pradesh Maharashtra Manipur Meghalaya Mizoram Nagaland Odisha Rajasthan Sikkim Tamil Nadu Telengana Tripura Uttar Pradesh Uttarakhand West Bengal See also List of wildlife sanctuaries of India Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education Botanical Survey of India Botanical Survey of India Zoological Survey of India Notes it