South India

Periyar National Park, around the artificial Periyar Lake created by a 19th-century dam, is one of India's earliest-protected forests (declared a sanctuary in 1934 under the Travancore princely state before later national-park status) and is known for boat-based tiger and elephant viewing, a rarity among Indian tiger reserves where sightings are usually vehicle-based.

Silent Valley National Park, in Palakkad district, protects one of the last substantial tracts of undisturbed tropical evergreen rainforest in the Western Ghats and is famous as the site of a landmark 1970s–80s environmental movement: a proposed hydroelectric dam across the Kunthipuzha river was shelved after sustained protest (one of independent India's first major environmental campaigns), after which the area was declared a national park in 1984. It remains one of the most important habitats of the endangered lion-tailed macaque.

Eravikulam National Park, in the high Anamalai/Kannan Devan hills, holds the largest surviving population of the Nilgiri tahr, a mountain goat endemic to the Western Ghats' high shola-grassland ecosystem.

Kudremukh National Park, named for a hill resembling a horse's face ("kudure" = horse, "mukha" = face), is a Western Ghats catchment forest at the source of the Tunga, Bhadra, and Netravati rivers, and has been a long-running site of conflict between conservation goals and iron-ore mining interests.

Bannerghatta National Park, just outside Bengaluru, functions partly as a biological park with dedicated safari zones (lion, tiger, herbivore) alongside its forest tract, making it a popular near-city wildlife destination distinct from the deeper-forest reserves elsewhere in Karnataka.

Mudumalai National Park, in the Nilgiris, is part of the same tri-state Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve landscape as Bandipur and Wayanad and is one of the older wildlife sanctuaries in the south, notable for its elephant corridors and its role as a key link in the larger Western Ghats tiger landscape.

Mukurthi National Park, also in the Nilgiris, is high-altitude shola-grassland habitat for the Nilgiri tahr and adjoins Eravikulam and Silent Valley, forming a connected high-elevation conservation landscape across the Kerala–Tamil Nadu border.

Indira Gandhi (Anamalai) National Park, in the Anamalai hills of Tamil Nadu, connects via elephant corridors to Kerala's Parambikulam Tiger Reserve, and together with it forms one of the larger contiguous elephant and tiger landscapes in the southern Western Ghats.

Nagarjunasagar-Srisailam Tiger Reserve, spanning Andhra Pradesh and Telangana around the Krishna river gorge, is India's largest tiger reserve by area, though its rugged, forested terrain has historically made tiger monitoring and density lower than in the more compact central Indian reserves.

Memory hook (Kerala's three, this table): "Periyar's elephant swam Silently past Eravikulam's tahr." Periyar → Silent Valley → Eravikulam.

Memory hook (Karnataka's two, this table): "Kudremukh's horse-face grazed beside Bannerghatta's safari jeep." Kudremukh → Bannerghatta.

Memory hook (Tamil Nadu's three, this table): "Mudumalai's elephant introduced Mukurthi's tahr to Indira Gandhi at Anamalai." Mudumalai → Mukurthi → Indira Gandhi (Anamalai).

Memory hook (the mega-reserve): "Nagarjuna's sagar (reservoir) is the biggest tiger reserve, full stop — largest by area, spanning two states (AP + Telangana)."

Practice Recall: Before reading on, name Kerala's three National Parks in this table.

Answer: Periyar, Silent Valley, Eravikulam.