The national 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 () to the north and Mukurthi National Park (78.46 km2) to the north-east, it is the core of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve (1,455.4 km2), and is part of the Nilgiri Sub-Cluster (6,000+ km2), Western Ghats World Heritage Site, recognised by UNESCO in 2007.