Asian Reserves Built Around a Single Animal

Manas was declared a wildlife sanctuary on 1 October 1928, the earliest sanctuary or park designation on this path. It lies along the Himalayan foothills of Assam on the border with Bhutan, shelters Bengal tiger and Asian elephant, and was inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 1985.

Established in 1936 as Hailey National Park, this is India's first national park. It was renamed in 1957 for the conservationist Jim Corbett and became the founding site of Project Tiger, the national tiger conservation program launched in 1973.

Wolong was established in 1963 at about 200 square kilometres and expanded in 1975 to about 2,000 square kilometres in the Qionglai Mountains, specifically to protect the giant panda and its bamboo forest. It now holds a panda breeding and research center and forms part of the Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries World Heritage Site.

Nepal's first national park was established in 1973 as Royal Chitwan National Park in the Terai lowlands. It protects one of the last significant populations of the greater one-horned rhinoceros together with Bengal tigers and gharial, and it became a World Heritage Site in 1984.

Kaziranga was first protected as a reserve forest in 1905 and became a national park in 1974, the designation that places it here. On the Brahmaputra floodplain it protects the world's largest population of the greater one-horned rhinoceros, the same flagship species as Chitwan, and was inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 1985.

Komodo was established in 1980 in the Lesser Sunda Islands of Indonesia to protect the Komodo dragon, the world's largest living lizard, which is found nowhere else. Its protection later widened to the park's marine environment, including coral reefs of the Coral Triangle, and it was inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 1991.

Declared on 4 May 1984, this West Bengal park is the core zone of a tiger reserve within the Indian part of the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest. Its Bengal tigers are adapted to a tidal mangrove setting, and it became a World Heritage Site in 1987.

Established in 1993 and expanded to its current size in 2000, this southern Mongolian park covers nearly 27,000 square kilometres and is the largest national park in Mongolia. It protects snow leopard, wild Bactrian camel and Gobi bear in one of the least disturbed desert ecosystems in Central Asia.