Itanagar Reserve Forest was declared as Itanagar Wildlife Sanctuary as the area was rich in the population of Wildlife like Sambar, Barking Deer, Elephant herbs, Tiger and Panthers. It shares geographical boundaries with Pam River in the East, Pachin in the South, Neorochi on the North-East and Chingke stream in the North. The capital of Arunachal Pradesh, Itanagar in located within the Sanctuary.

Tiger

Due to expansion of human habitation and clearance of forest covers for development purposes, settlements etc. the numbers of animals have unfortunately gone down in region. The State bird of Arunachal Pradesh, the magnificent Hornbill used to be found in the Sanctuary, but their population came down drastically due to loss of habitat. However, the Wildlife is still available in a fair number especially in the northern and eastern side of the Itanagar Sanctuary. The increase in number of guns in Itanagar has also resulted in depletion of wildlife population. Hunting is a way of life for the local tribals of Arunachal Pradesh which is primarily for meat and secondary for skin, teeth, bones, anther, feather and beaks.

The vegetation of this Sanctuary is tropical semi evergreen and wet evergreen. The main features of the forest are Heterogeneous mixture of the species with the merging of evergreen and semi evergreen forest into one another. Pure patches of bamboos are very common in almost all the area. Except the valleys and foothills the terrain is entirely hilly. By numerous streams and rivers the hills are very broken and cut up. The valleys are narrow and the hill slopes are mostly steep to very steep.

A large chunk of Sanctuary falls under Mixed Bamboo forests. The most common bamboos are found here Bambusa palida (Bijuli) and Dendrocalamus hamiltonii (Kako). Tree species found here are Duabanga grandiflora (Khokan), Amoora Wallichii (Aman), Toona ciliata (Poma), Magnolia spp (Sopa), Schima Wallichii (Makrisal) and Castonopsis indica (Hingori) etc. Grass available here are succharam procerum, S.Spontamum, Andropogon assimillis, phramites karka, Allpinia allugus.