Rajasthan Forests, Wildlife Sanctuaries and National Parks

Rajasthan is the largest state of India by area but one of the poorest in forest, because the Thar desert and the thorn scrub of the west leave little room for trees. That contrast is exactly what examiners test: a dry state whose few protected pockets include a World Heritage bird park, two of the earliest tiger reserves of the country and the last secure home of the Great Indian Bustard. These notes cover the forest types of Rajasthan, its state symbols, its national parks, tiger reserves, Ramsar wetlands and the sanctuaries whose single species decides the answer.

Forest types and the trees that matter

Forest covers less than a tenth of the area of Rajasthan, the lowest share among the larger states, and it is concentrated in the south and south-east, in and around Udaipur, Chittorgarh, Pratapgarh, Banswara, Baran and Kota. Three types are distinguished. Tropical dry deciduous forest, the dhok forest, is the most widespread; dhok, also called dhokra, is the commonest tree of the state and the chief fodder tree of the Aravalli. Tropical thorn forest covers the west, where khejri, babool, rohida, kair and ber grow scattered over sand. Subtropical evergreen forest survives only on Mount Abu, the single hill station of the state, where the higher rainfall supports a different flora. Teak forest is confined to the south, in Banswara, Udaipur and Chittorgarh, and bamboo grows in the same belt. Salar and khair occur on the Aravalli slopes.

State symbols of Rajasthan

The khejri, Prosopis cineraria, is the state tree and the kalpavriksha of the desert, used for its leaves as fodder, its pods as the vegetable sangri and its wood; the rohida, Tecomella undulata, is the state flower and is called the teak of the desert. The chinkara, the Indian gazelle, is the state animal, and the camel was declared the state animal in the domesticated category. The godawan or Great Indian Bustard is the state bird, and the Rajasthani name for it is the clue examiners use.

National parks and tiger reserves

Ranthambore in Sawai Madhopur is the best known park of the state. It grew out of the Sawai Madhopur hunting preserve of the Jaipur rulers, was brought under Project Tiger in 1973 as one of the nine original reserves, and holds the Trinetra Ganesh temple inside Ranthambore fort along with the Padam Talab lake. Keoladeo National Park at Bharatpur, once the Bharatpur bird sanctuary created by Maharaja Suraj Mal as a duck shoot, is the one UNESCO World Heritage Site among the parks of the state and a Ramsar wetland, famous as the winter home of thousands of waterbirds and formerly of the Siberian crane. Sariska in Alwar became a sanctuary in 1955 and a tiger reserve in 1978, and it made history as the first reserve in the world to which tigers were moved by air; Kankwari fort, Pandupol and the Neelkanth temples lie within it. Mukundra Hills near Kota, carved out of the old Darrah sanctuary, became a tiger reserve in 2013, and Ramgarh Vishdhari in Bundi was notified as a tiger reserve in 2021. The Desert National Park spread over Jaisalmer and Barmer is the largest protected area of the state and the stronghold of the Great Indian Bustard, with the Akal wood fossil park nearby.

Wetlands and sanctuaries by their species

Conservation that began in Rajasthan

• The Bishnoi community of western Rajasthan protects the khejri tree and the blackbuck by religious tenet.
• At Khejarli in Jodhpur district in 1730, Amrita Devi Bishnoi and hundreds of villagers died resisting the felling of khejri trees; the national award for community wildlife protection is named after her.
• Rajasthan has two Ramsar wetlands: Keoladeo Ghana, listed in 1981, and Sambhar Lake, listed in 1990.
• Sariska and Ranthambore both lie in the Aravalli, and both are reserves where tiger numbers had to be rebuilt.
• Sonkhaliya in Ajmer is a closed area for the Great Indian Bustard, and Sorsan in Baran for the blackbuck.