A group of retired forest officers has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanding the immediate scrapping of the 10,000-acre Aravalli Zoo safari project in Gurugram and Nuh districts of Haryana. In their letter, 37 retired Indian Forest Service (IFS) officers, including the former principal chief conservators of forests, argued that the project is focused on boosting tourism rather than conserving wildlife.
They also highlighted the "alarming destruction" of India's oldest mountain range due to mining, quarrying, real estate development, and deforestation. The retired forest officers pointed out that human activities in the Aravallis, which stretch across Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, and end near Delhi, have destroyed wildlife habitats, leading to human-wildlife conflicts and severely depleted groundwater in many areas.
Spread over an area of 692 km, the Aravallis extend from Gujarat to Delhi, spanning the states of Rajasthan and Haryana. In 2022, then-Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar stated that the first phase of the proposed Aravalli Zoo safari project would be completed within two years. . It was also part of the BJP's election promises for the 2024 Haryana polls.
In their letter the foresters have also urged immediate conservation efforts for the ancient mountain range, citing the devastating impact of mining, real estate development, and deforestation.
They said the project's goal is to increase tourist footfall in Haryana and attract government and private investment in the tourism sector. "Conservation of the Aravallis is not the goal," their letter read.
Apart from increasing vehicular traffic and construction in the ecologically sensitive area, the project could also disturb aquifers that are crucial for the water-starved districts of Gurugram and Nuh, they warned. "The aquifers are interconnected, and any disturbance or alterations in the pattern can significantly impact groundwater," they said.
The Central Ground Water Board has already classified groundwater levels in Gurugram and Nuh as "overexploited". “The mining mafia carries out the illegal quarrying of rocks with complete disregard to environmental norms for obtaining building materials to feed the hungry ever-expanding real estate industry in the National Capital Region of Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, Faridabad and Ghaziabad. We understand that the mining fetches Rs 5000 crore annually as royalty from mining companies but this revenue generation is at the cost of destruction of our rivers, mountains, forests.