Annapurna — Landseed

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Annapurna Conservation Area

Adjacent reserves

Iconic wildlifetap a species ↗

Snow leopard

Blue sheep (bharal)

Himalayan tahr

Himalayan musk deer

Red panda

Himalayan monal

Clouded leopard

Himalayan wolf

Kiang

Himalayan black bear

Highways & main roads

Park post / HQ

Altitude bands · 790–8,091 m in the park

Permanent snow & ice5,600 m +

Periglacial rock & scree4,800–5,600

Alpine meadow & shrub4,000–4,800

Upper treeline woodland3,000–4,000

Temperate conifer forest2,000–3,000

Temperate broadleaf forest1,000–2,000

Subtropical hill forest< 1,000

Bands are altitude, not vegetation. North of the crest, in Manang and Mustang, these same elevations carry trans-Himalayan semi-desert rather than meadow — the range wrings the monsoon out on its southern face. Zonation after the KBA factsheet for ACA and Shrestha & Wegge 2008.

Wildlife · population

Annapurna Conservation Area

7,629 km² spanning the Himalayan crest — Nepal's largest protected area and its first Conservation Area, a designation created so that the roughly 100,000 people already living here could stay. Its boundary runs some 461 km as digitised, about 1.5 times the 310 km a circle of equal area would need: a compact shape for a park this size, because it is bounded by watersheds rather than by farmland.

Area

7,629 km² gazetted

Share of Nepal

5.18% largest protected area

Boundary

~461 km as digitised

Compactness

0.45 Polsby–Popper

Established

1986 gazetted 1992

Elevation

790 – 8,091 m

IUCN Category VI — a Conservation Area, not a national park: people live inside it by design

Managed by a trust, not the state — the National Trust for Nature Conservation, through the Annapurna Conservation Area Project

Began as one village — a pilot in Ghandruk covering ~200 km² in 1986; 1,500 km² by 1990; gazetted at 7,629 km² in 1992

128 species of wild mammal recorded, across five districts and 15 rural municipalities.

Area, dates, districts and the mammal count: NTNC / Annapurna Conservation Area Project. Boundary drawn from OpenStreetMap rel. 4497739. Note: that OSM ring measures ~7,535 km², about 1.2% less than the gazetted 7,629 km² — unusually close agreement for an OSM protected-area ring, but the drawn shape is still not cadastral and every area figure shown comes from NTNC, not from the outline. Perimeter and compactness are computed from the OSM ring and are scale-dependent (the true boundary is longer). Elevation range: Key Biodiversity Areas factsheet 14322. Dhaulagiri I (8,167 m) and Manaslu (8,163 m) appear on the map but lie outside the boundary, which is why the park's stated maximum is Annapurna I's 8,091 m.