The Sathyamangalam Nobody Wrote Down.

A complete, cited reference to the 1,408 km² tiger reserve: 112 tigers, 651 elephants, five forest types, and the Soliga and Irula communities who share the ground with them. Built from primary sources, updated live.

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LandGeography, Forest Types & the Gazetteer Where the Western and Eastern Ghats physically meet: thorn scrub at 600mm of rain and semi-evergreen forest at 1,200m, sometimes twenty kilometres apart. Explore → Life1,893 Taxa Recorded 40+ mammals, 225+ birds, 150+ trees and more, searchable, with IUCN status, WPA schedule and population counts where they exist. Explore → PeopleSoliga, Irula, Kurumba & the FRA Nine tribal settlements sit inside the reserve. Most conservation coverage counts tigers and stops; this page does not. Explore → History1790 to the Present An economic resource, a military corridor and a hiding place, long before it was a tiger reserve: two centuries the internet has quietly mislaid. Explore →
The Name, and What It's Built On

Sathya, truth. Mangalam, an auspicious place.

A name older than the reserve, on the corridor between the Kongu plains and the Mysore plateau, where the Western and Eastern Ghats physically meet: one of very few places in India that can say so. The name itself traces back through Chera and Vijayanagara rule, centuries before any survey or notification gave the landscape an official boundary. Most coverage of Sathyamangalam counts tigers and stops. This site exists to hold the fuller record: cited, cross-checked, and honest about what it doesn't yet know.

Why This Record Exists
Recognition, Not Adjectives

Four named, dated, checkable reasons this reserve stands out

The Scale of What's Here

Not a footnote to Ooty: a landscape with its own numbers

0species and taxa recorded
0tigers, 2024–25 estimate
0elephants
0tribal settlements inside the reserve
» See the Full Species Atlas
Land: Ten Ranges

All Ten Ranges: Six Confirmed, Four Estimated, 1,408.40 km² in Total

Land: Connectivity

Five Named Corridors Tie This Reserve to the Wider Ghats

Sathyamangalam isn't an island. Two 2023 government reports name five specific corridors connecting it to the BR Hills, the Chamarajanagar landscape and Coimbatore's forest divisions: the actual routes elephants use to move between protected areas, not a general claim about connectivity. Two of the five are separate interstate links between Chamarajanagar and Talamalai alone, and one, Mudahalli–Talavadi, is flagged in the report as still being actively restored rather than already secure. The reserve also sits inside the wider Mudumalai–Bandipur–Wayanad–Sathyamangalam elephant complex, alongside the well-known Segur corridors further west.

» See the Five Corridors
Why This Site Exists

Most regional coverage goes to Ooty, Mudumalai and Masinagudi. Sathyamangalam is left out, and this record shows exactly where.

Not a complaint, a measured gap. The database behind this site scores its own completeness across ten domains, honestly, including the ones still near zero:

0%consented community oral history & ethnobotany recorded
0%annotated pre-1950 primary-source passages catalogued
0%of the gazetteer's 1,200-place target mapped
1970s–2004the Veerappan years, why the documentation gap opened in the first place
» Help Close the Gap: Get in Touch
People

The Forest Was Inhabited First

Nine settlements, three communities, one law. Soliga, Irula and Kurumba families live inside and around the reserve; Irula and Soliga youth staff the 54 anti-poaching camps the Forest Department itself depends on. Tamil Nadu has granted just 25% of Forest Rights Act claims filed, against 60% next door in Kerala. This atlas assembles the documentary record (orders, judgments, claim statistics), and the full page publishes community material only with informed consent, never stock photography.

» Read the Full Record
History

Sandalwood, empire, a lost battle, a bandit, and a comeback

1790Tipu Sultan descends the Gajalhatti Pass; Battle of Sathyamangalam
1887Nicholson's Coimbatore District Manual records the forests in detail
1990sThe Veerappan years: banditry closes the forest for a generation
2013Sathyamangalam notified as India's 41st tiger reserve
2022TX2 Award for the fastest documented tiger recovery on record
» Read the Full History
Elsewhere on the Record
» See the Coverage Dashboard
The Record, in Four Numbers, and What They Don't Hide
overall live coverage, computed from the database, not hand-typed
1,893taxa recorded across the species atlas
89gazetteer places, 7.4% of target
3disputed figures shown side by side, not silently resolved
See the full coverage dashboard →

Verify Us, Correct Us, or Just Explore the Data

Every figure on this site carries a named source. Where sources conflict, both are shown. The underlying database is open: browse the bibliography, the coverage dashboard, or reach the official Tamil Nadu Forest Department channels directly.

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