Haryana National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries Notes

The correct answer is B, Gurugram. Sultanpur National Park stands near Farrukhnagar in Gurugram district, on the road from Gurugram to Jhajjar. It is a shallow freshwater lake ringed by grassland and scrub, the best known protected area of Haryana, and it draws thousands of migratory waterbirds every winter.

Option A, Jhajjar, is wrong for Sultanpur but is the district of Bhindawas and Khaparwas wildlife sanctuaries, and Bhindawas is the other Ramsar site of the state, so the two districts are easy to confuse. Option C, Rewari, holds the Nahar Wildlife Sanctuary in the Aravalli scrub, not Sultanpur. Option D, Kurukshetra, holds the Chhilchhila Wildlife Sanctuary and the crocodile breeding centre at Bhor Saidan. The safest way to hold the fact is to pair the two national parks with their districts at once: Sultanpur with Gurugram and Kalesar with Yamunanagar.

The correct answer is A, Yamunanagar. Kalesar National Park lies in the Shivalik foothills of Yamunanagar district at the north-eastern corner of Haryana, where the state meets Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand along the Yamuna. It was declared a national park in 2003, and the Kalesar Wildlife Sanctuary adjoins it in the same district.

Option B, Panchkula, is also a Shivalik district and holds the Bir Shikargah and Khol Hi-Raitan wildlife sanctuaries as well as the vulture breeding centre at Pinjore, but not Kalesar. Option C, Ambala, lies on the plain just below the hills and has no national park. Option D, Kaithal, holds the Saraswati Wildlife Sanctuary, the largest sanctuary of the state, which is a separate fact worth keeping. Kalesar is the one place in Haryana with a genuine sal forest, so sal, leopard and Yamunanagar go together.

The correct answer is B, Sultanpur National Park and Bhindawas Wildlife Sanctuary. These were Haryana's first two wetlands recognised under the Ramsar Convention as wetlands of international importance, both in 2021. Sultanpur is in Gurugram district and Bhindawas, the largest wetland in the state, is in Jhajjar district and is filled by overflow from the Jawaharlal Nehru canal.

Option A is wrong because Kalesar is a Shivalik forest and Bir Shikargah a hill scrub sanctuary; neither is a wetland and neither is a Ramsar site. Option C names two genuine wetlands, Chhilchhila in Kurukshetra and Khaparwas in Jhajjar, but they do not carry the Ramsar tag, which is the trap in this question. Option D names an Aravalli sanctuary and the state's largest sanctuary, again not wetlands of the Ramsar list. The detail examiners want is that one of the two is a national park and the other a sanctuary.

The correct answer is B, Jhajjar. Bhindawas Wildlife Sanctuary is a man-made wetland in Jhajjar district, filled by overflow water from the Jawaharlal Nehru canal. It is the largest wetland in Haryana, was recognised as a Ramsar site in 2021, and hosts a long list of migratory waterbirds each winter. The smaller Khaparwas Wildlife Sanctuary lies nearby in the same district.

Option A, Sirsa, holds the Abubshahar Wildlife Sanctuary along the Ghaggar belt, known for blackbuck and chinkara. Option C, Kaithal, holds the Saraswati Wildlife Sanctuary, which is the largest sanctuary of the state by area but is a plantation tract rather than a wetland; the word largest in two different senses is the trap here. Option D, Rewari, holds the Nahar Wildlife Sanctuary in Aravalli scrub. Keep Jhajjar as the district of two wetlands, Bhindawas and Khaparwas.

The correct answer is A, Pinjore. The Jatayu Conservation Breeding Centre at Pinjore in Panchkula district was India's first centre for breeding vultures in captivity, run by the Haryana forest department with the Bombay Natural History Society. It was created after the veterinary painkiller diclofenac, taken in by vultures feeding on treated cattle carcasses, destroyed most of the country's vulture population; the centre breeds the white-rumped, long-billed and slender-billed vultures for release.

Option B, Morni, is the hill station of Panchkula district and holds Karoh Peak, the highest point of Haryana, but no vulture centre. Option C, Kalesar, is the national park of Yamunanagar with its sal forest. Option D, Bhor Saidan, is in Kurukshetra district and is the state's crocodile breeding centre, which makes it the most tempting wrong answer because both are breeding centres. Pair them as vultures at Pinjore and crocodiles at Bhor Saidan.

The correct answer is C, Saraswati Wildlife Sanctuary. It lies in Kaithal district and is the largest wildlife sanctuary in Haryana by area, a plantation and scrub tract along the old course associated with the Saraswati, created to restore tree cover and wildlife on land that had little of either.

Option A, Bhindawas in Jhajjar, is the largest wetland of the state and a Ramsar site, but a wetland is not the same as the largest sanctuary, and this double use of the word largest is exactly the confusion the question is built on. Option B, Kalesar Wildlife Sanctuary in Yamunanagar, is the most important forest sanctuary and sits beside the national park, but it is smaller. Option D, Abubshahar in Sirsa, is a dry sanctuary of the Ghaggar belt known for blackbuck and chinkara. Hold three superlatives apart: largest sanctuary Saraswati, largest wetland Bhindawas, best known park Sultanpur.

The correct answer is A, Panchkula. Bir Shikargah Wildlife Sanctuary lies in the Shivalik tract of Panchkula district. The name itself explains its origin: a bir is an enclosed woodlot and shikargah means a hunting ground, so the area was a hunting preserve of the princely period that was later turned into a protected area. Khol Hi-Raitan Wildlife Sanctuary is in the same district.

Option B, Jind, holds Bir Bara Ban, another bir woodlot, which is why the two are easily mixed up. Option C, Gurugram, holds Sultanpur National Park and the Aravalli Biodiversity Park, not Bir Shikargah. Option D, Yamunanagar, holds Kalesar National Park and the Kalesar sanctuary. Panchkula is worth remembering as the richest district for protected land in Haryana: two sanctuaries, the vulture centre at Pinjore, the Morni hills and the highest forest cover in the state.

The correct answer is B, the blackbuck, called krishnamrig in Hindi. The blackbuck is the state animal of Haryana and survives in the open scrub and grassland of Sirsa, Hisar, Bhiwani and Rewari, where sanctuaries such as Abubshahar and Nahar protect it, helped in the south-west by the Bishnoi tradition of protecting wildlife.

Option A, the nilgai, is the largest antelope of India and is very common in Haryana's fields, but being common is not the same as being the state symbol, and it is in fact treated as a crop pest. Option C, the chinkara or Indian gazelle, also lives in the dry south-west and is bred at centres such as Kairu in Bhiwani, but it is the state animal of Rajasthan, not Haryana. Option D, the sambar, is the large deer of the Kalesar forest in the Shivaliks. Remember the pair: blackbuck as the state animal and the black francolin or kala teetar as the state bird.

The correct answer is A, Kurukshetra. The crocodile breeding centre at Bhor Saidan lies in Kurukshetra district and breeds the marsh crocodile, the mugger. Kurukshetra also holds the Chhilchhila Wildlife Sanctuary, a wetland for migratory birds, and the deer and blackbuck enclosures at Pipli, so the district appears more than once in this chapter.

Option B, Karnal, is important for the National Dairy Research Institute and the Central Soil Salinity Research Institute, not for a wildlife breeding centre. Option C, Jhajjar, is the district of the Bhindawas and Khaparwas wetlands. Option D, Sirsa, holds Abubshahar Wildlife Sanctuary. A quick way to fix the breeding centres is by species: vultures at Pinjore in Panchkula, crocodiles at Bhor Saidan in Kurukshetra, chinkara at Kairu in Bhiwani and peafowl and chinkara at Jhabua in Rewari.

The correct answer is B, sal. Kalesar in Yamunanagar district is the one place in Haryana with a genuine sal forest, a Shivalik type of dry deciduous forest mixed with khair, shisham, sain and semul, with chir pine on the higher slopes. The forest supports leopard, sambar, chital, ghoral, barking deer and wild boar, and it continues across the state boundary into Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

Option A, teak, is the characteristic tree of the moist and dry deciduous forests of central and peninsular India, not of the Shivaliks of Haryana. Option C, khejri, is the hardy tree of the dry south-west of the state and of the Rajasthan desert, the very opposite environment to Kalesar. Option D, mangrove, grows only on tidal coasts and deltas, and Haryana is landlocked. The sal patch at Kalesar is the exception that makes the park worth protecting, so the tree and the park are asked together.

The correct answer is C, the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972. This is the law under which state governments declare national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, conservation reserves and community reserves, and under which species are listed in schedules for protection. A sanctuary permits certain regulated rights inside it, while a national park is stricter: grazing and private rights are not allowed and the boundary can be altered only by a resolution of the state legislature.

Option A, the Indian Forest Act of 1927, deals with reserved, protected and village forests and with forest produce, not with the creation of parks and sanctuaries. Option B, the Forest (Conservation) Act of 1980, controls the diversion of forest land to non-forest use and requires central approval for it. Option D, the Environment (Protection) Act of 1986, is the umbrella law passed after the Bhopal gas tragedy under which rules on pollution and eco-sensitive zones are framed. The four laws are regularly set against one another.

The correct answer is A, Sirsa. Abubshahar Wildlife Sanctuary lies in Sirsa district in the dry south-western corner of Haryana, in the belt through which the seasonal Ghaggar passes. It protects the open scrub and grassland habitat of the blackbuck, the chinkara and the nilgai, animals of the arid plain rather than of forest.

Option B, Fatehabad, and Option C, Hisar, are neighbouring districts of the same dry tract and hold blackbuck in the countryside, and Hisar has a well-known deer park, but the sanctuary is not in either. Option D, Bhiwani, is also part of the dry south-west and has a chinkara breeding centre at Kairu and a mini zoo, but again no Abubshahar. Remember the south-western group by district: the sanctuary in Sirsa, the chinkara centre in Bhiwani, the deer park in Hisar.