Initially called the Hailey Park, the Corbett National Park was later re-named after Colonel Edward James Corbett (25 July 1875 - 19 April 1955), a hunter, writer, thinker and pioneer conservationist whose efforts to preserve the wildlife of the Kumaon hills led to the creation of this National Park, the first of its kind in India. Born of English parents in Nainital, his early life was dominated by a passion for hunting and fishing which later shifted to big game photography. He is famed for having hunted down at least a dozen man-eaters.
A conservationist at heart, he lectured at local schools and societies to help generate an awareness and interest in the local flora and fauna, encouraging people to preserve the natural riches endowed on the land. He was very popular with the local people of the Kumaon hills and earned the nickname of 'Carpet' Sahib.
Jim Corbett relocated to Kenya in 1947 in the wake India's independence. He played host to Princess Elizabeth and Prince Phillip at 'Treetops' (a luxury hotel in the branches of a giant ficus tree) the night King George VI died. Corbett is famed to have written in the hotel's visitors' register "For the first time in the history of the world a young girl climbed into a tree one day a Princess, and climbed down from the tree the next day a Queen."
He died of a heart attack days after finishing his sixth book Tree Tops Tree Tops, and was buried at St. Peter's Anglican Church in Nyeri.
The natural paradise that he helped to create, the Corbett National Park still reverberates with the memories of this great man, who dedicated his life to the conservation of the natural heritage of the Himalayan foothills.
