Nanda Devi Biosphere Decadal Monitoring Campaign 2026

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Key takeaways

The 2026 decadal monitoring survey revealed that landslide hazards have almost doubled across the core area of the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve over the past decade.
Spread across 6,407 sq km in Uttarakhand, the reserve includes Nanda Devi National Park and Valley of Flowers National Park, inscribed together as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The landscape shows an extreme altitude range from 1,800 m up to 7,817 m at Mount Nanda Devi, housing over 30 active glaciers.
Human entry and trekking have remained completely banned in the core zone since 1983 to preserve fragile habitats for snow leopards and musk deer.

The Uttarakhand Forest Department and the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) conducted the Nanda Devi Biosphere Decadal Monitoring Campaign 2026.
This latest survey showed that landslide-prone zones inside the strictly protected core zone have almost doubled over the last ten years.

This high-altitude protected Himalayan landscape falls under the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme.
The reserve includes two core zones: Nanda Devi National Park and Valley of Flowers National Park, which together form a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The reserve covers 6,407 sq km across the Chamoli, Pithoragarh, and Bageshwar districts in the Garhwal and Kumaon Himalayas of Uttarakhand.
It sits entirely within the upper catchment area of the Alaknanda river system.

The area was first set up in 1982 as Sanjay Gandhi National Park, and authorities later changed its name to Nanda Devi National Park.
The government banned all trekking, mountaineering, and human activities in the core zone in 1983 to safeguard its fragile ecosystem.
UNESCO inscribed Nanda Devi National Park as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988, and added Valley of Flowers National Park to this listing in 2005.
The reserve became a member of the UNESCO World Network of Biosphere Reserves under the MAB programme in 2004.

The elevation rises steeply from 1,800 m to 7,817 m at the summit of Nanda Devi, which is India's second-highest peak surrounded by massive mountain walls.
It sits in an ecological transition zone between the dry Zanskar Range and the wet Great Himalaya, hosting temperate forests, alpine meadows called bugyals, and perpetual snowfields.
The landscape houses more than 1,000 plant species, where 55% are Himalayan natives and 10% are endemic plants, including dwarf rhododendrons and unique medicinal herbs.
It serves as a vital refuge for endangered alpine wildlife like snow leopards, Himalayan musk deer, bharal, Himalayan black bears, and brown bears.
The reserve holds over 30 glaciers, including Rishi, Trishul, and Ramani glaciers, which feed the Rishi Ganga river before it flows into the Dhauliganga and Alaknanda rivers.

Because humans and livestock have remained barred from the core zone for decades, scientists use it as an undisturbed baseline to observe climate change, forest line shifts, and glacier retreat.
Tracking unstable moraines, melting glaciers, and glacial lakes improves early warning networks for downstream communities, especially after the fatal 2021 Rishi Ganga disaster.