Natural Vegetation, Biodiversity and Conservation in Rajasthan

This is the largest theme in Rajasthan Geography in the recent papers — more than a fifth of the unit across 2021, 2023 and 2024, and larger now than minerals. It is also the theme where RPSC repeats itself: the conservation-reserve list has been set in four papers out of six, and one question came back almost word for word within two years.

Almost all of it is list-work. The lists are short, closed and published by the state, which makes this the highest-return block in the unit.

1. Three forest figures that are not the same thing

The single most common error in this topic is treating "forest area" as one number. It is three, the largest is nearly double the smallest, and RPSC has tested the smallest one.

Rajasthan has three official forest figures, published by three different arms of government, and they measure three different things.

GovtSources: the recorded forest area is the Rajasthan Forest Department's own statement; forest cover is from the Forest Survey of India's India State of Forest Report 2023; the land-use "Forests" figure is from Land Use Statistics, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare, 2021-22, as reproduced in ISFR 2023 Table 10.22.1. Three bodies, three definitions — which is the whole point of the table.

A legal designation, a revenue class and a tree canopy are three different objects. Land can be recorded as forest and carry no trees, which in a desert state is common; and trees can stand on land never recorded as forest. The legal figure is roughly twice the physical one, and that gap is the fact worth carrying.

The 2023 assessment, class by class

GovtSource: Forest Survey of India, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, India State of Forest Report 2023, Volume 2, section 10.22 (Rajasthan), Table 10.22.2. ISFR is the originating body for forest-cover data and reports on a two-year cycle; the 2023 report is the current edition.

Almost three-quarters of Rajasthan's forest is Open Forest, and Very Dense Forest is seven hundredths of one per cent of the state. The state's forest is real but thin, and any answer that treats "forest cover" as dense woodland has misread the category.

The figure has fallen, and the widely-quoted number says the opposite

Always attach the report year, because the figure moves:

GovtSource: Forest Survey of India, India State of Forest Report 2023, Table 10.22.3 grand total, for the change against 2021. The 2019 and 2021 figures are from the corresponding earlier editions of the same biennial report.

Between the 2021 and 2023 assessments Rajasthan's forest cover fell by 83.80 sq km — the Forest Survey's own change figure for the state.

And here is the trap, because the number in circulation points the other way. ISFR 2023 also records that Rajasthan's forest and tree cover rose by 394 sq km, the fourth-largest increase among states, and that is the figure that was reported. Both are correct and they are not contradictory. Forest cover fell; forest-and-tree cover rose — because the second adds trees outside forest, which grew by more than forest cover lost.

An option pairing "Rajasthan" with "increase" or with "decrease" can be right or wrong depending only on which of the two quantities the stem names. Read the noun.

RPSC set the ISFR 2021 pair — 16,654 sq km and 4.87% — in the 2023 paper, and the arithmetic confirms it: 16,654 ÷ 342,239 = 4.867%. That question is now one assessment out of date, which is exactly why the report year is part of the answer.

Inside and outside the recorded forest area

GovtSource: Forest Survey of India, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, India State of Forest Report 2023, Volume 2, section 10.22 (Rajasthan), Table 10.22.5. ISFR is the originating body for forest-cover data and reports on a two-year cycle; the 2023 report is the current edition.

About 77% of Rajasthan's forest cover lies inside the recorded forest area and 23% outside it.

The composition of the two is completely different, and that is the point. Inside the legal forest, the split is 1.71% very dense, 30.64% moderately dense, 67.65% open. Outside it, 90.87% is open forest and only 0.16% is very dense. Legal protection and canopy density track each other — which is the strongest single argument in this chapter for why the recorded forest area matters even where it looks empty.

The legal figure has three official versions, and they differ

Section 1 gives the recorded forest area as "about 9.5%". That is as far as a single number can honestly go, because three arms of government publish three of them, and none is a rounding of another.

GovtSources: Rajasthan Forest Department, Annual Administrative Report 2025-26, executive summary, which states the total and the three legal classes and attributes the classification to the Rajasthan Forest Act, 1953; the department's district-wise forest area according to legal status as on 31.03.2023, compiled by its Working Plan and Forest Settlement Cell; and Forest Survey of India, India State of Forest Report 2023, Volume 1, recorded forest area by legal category. Areas in sq km. The three totals are given as each body publishes them, with no attempt to reconcile them.

The spread is about 195 sq km, which is small against the total and large against the difference between options in a question. Quote 9.65% with the department's current report, 9.60% with ISFR, and 9.59% only where the 31 March 2023 district table is the thing being used. What must not happen is what the coaching books do: quote 9.60% and attribute it to ISFR as forest cover. 9.60% is ISFR's figure for the recorded forest area, printed in a table of legal categories; ISFR's forest cover for Rajasthan is 4.84%, and the two sit in different volumes of the same report.

The composition is the part worth carrying into an answer. Protected forest is the largest class in every version, at 54% to 57% of the legal forest, reserved forest is roughly 37%, and unclassified forest is under 8%. Rajasthan is therefore the opposite of the states usually taught as the model, where reserved forest dominates. A protected forest carries rights that a reserved forest does not, so more than half of Rajasthan's legal forest is land over which villages hold recorded rights of grazing and produce. That single fact explains why almost every conservation programme in this chapter is built around community participation rather than exclusion.

Two district facts from the same table are examinable. Udaipur holds the most legal forest, 3,902.49 sq km, and the most reserved forest, 2,449.60. Churu holds the least, 73.73 sq km, and the smallest share of its own area, 0.53%. Pratapgarh has the highest share, 43.27% of the district recorded as forest. And six districts hold no reserved forest at all, Banswara, Baran, Bikaner, Ganganagar, Hanumangarh and Jaisalmer, including Baran, which has the largest protected forest in the state at 2,233.03 sq km. Baran is the cleanest example of the point above: a heavily forested district in which the entire legal forest is the class that carries rights.

One administrative figure completes the picture. Of the 33,020.32 sq km of legal forest, 29,498.49 sq km has actually been entered in the revenue records, about 89%. Roughly a ninth of the state's legal forest is still not mutated in the land records, which is the practical reason boundary disputes and encroachment cases persist.

The department's own structure, since questions are set on it. Rajasthan has 38 territorial forest divisions and 16 wildlife divisions, and the seven divisional Chief Conservators of Forests are aligned to the state's seven revenue divisions.

GovtSource: Rajasthan Forest Department, Annual Administrative Report 2025-26, "Forest Department at a glance" for the division counts, and the Working Plan section for the revenue-record figure. Note the unit: these are divisions, not circles.

Rajasthan against India

GovtSource: Forest Survey of India, India State of Forest Report 2023, Volume 1, the national totals and the state-wise table of forest cover, tree cover and forest and tree cover. The Rajasthan row is repeated by the state's own Annual Administrative Report 2025-26, which quotes forest cover 16,548.21 sq km, tree cover 10,841.12 sq km and a combined 27,389.33 sq km.

Rajasthan's forest cover is less than a quarter of the national proportion. That is not a policy failure so much as a climate fact, since a state that is three-fifths desert cannot carry a national average, but it is the comparison an examiner reaches for, and 21.76% against 4.84% is the pair to hold.

Now read the second column, because it reverses the impression. Rajasthan has the second-largest tree cover of any state in India, 10,841.12 sq km, behind Maharashtra's 14,524.88 and ahead of Uttar Pradesh's 8,950.92. A state with a quarter of the national forest proportion carries nearly a tenth of the country's trees outside forest.

This is the arithmetic behind the trap in the section above. Forest cover fell by 83.80 sq km; tree cover rose by 478.26 sq km, the second-largest increase in the country after Chhattisgarh; so forest and tree cover together rose by 394.46 sq km, the fourth-largest increase among states, after Chhattisgarh (683.62), Uttar Pradesh (559.19) and Odisha (558.57). The rise did not happen in the forest. It happened in the fields, on the bunds and along the roads, which is exactly where Khejri and juliflora stand, and exactly what the state forest policy is trying to do more of.

One more line from the same report closes the loop. Rajasthan showed the second-largest decrease in the country of forest cover outside the recorded forest area, 110.65 sq km, after Madhya Pradesh. So canopy outside the legal forest fell while tree cover outside the legal forest rose. These count different objects: a patch above a hectare carrying 10% canopy is forest cover; a tree standing alone is tree cover. When a question pairs Rajasthan with a rise or a fall, the noun decides the answer, and there are now three nouns in play.

District by district, and a question that has stopped having an answer

RPSC has set district-wise forest cover before, so the table is worth knowing at its extremes rather than in full.

GovtSource: Forest Survey of India, India State of Forest Report 2023, Volume 2, section 10.22 (Rajasthan), Table 10.22.3, district-wise forest cover, sorted in full; the 33 district totals add to the state figure of 16,548.21 sq km. ISFR reports Rajasthan as 33 districts, the pre-2023 framework, so these are pre-2023 district boundaries.

Udaipur is the answer to four different questions, holding the most forest cover, the highest percentage, the most legal forest and the most reserved forest. Churu is the answer at the other end on both measures. Those two names carry most of what this table can be asked about.

Now the part that changes an old answer. RPSC asked in 2021 which district had the minimum very dense forest under ISFR 2019, and the key was Jodhpur. Under ISFR 2023 that question has no unique answer: twenty-two of the thirty-three districts record very dense forest of exactly 0.00 sq km, Jodhpur among them. Only eleven districts have any very dense forest at all, and they are, in order, Alwar 61.72, Udaipur 61.27, Sawai Madhopur 37.04, Rajsamand 23.22, Pali 21.58, Jaipur 12.78, Jaisalmer 2.91, Bundi 1.02, Hanumangarh 0.92, Bikaner 0.44 and Dausa 0.30.

Two things follow. Alwar, not Udaipur, has the most very dense forest in Rajasthan, by less than half a square kilometre, which is a fact nobody guesses. And a superlative built on near-zero values is unstable between assessments, which is why the report year in the stem is not decoration.

2. Forest types: what actually grows

The Forest Survey classifies Rajasthan's forest under the Champion & Seth system of 1968. Twenty types are recorded, and two of them are more than half the state's forest.

GovtSource: Forest Survey of India, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, India State of Forest Report 2023, Volume 2, section 10.22 (Rajasthan), Table 10.22.10, Champion & Seth forest-type areas. ISFR is the originating body for forest-cover data and reports on a two-year cycle; the 2023 report is the current edition.

Two conclusions an answer can be built on.

Rajasthan's forest is overwhelmingly dry deciduous, not desert vegetation. Northern dry mixed deciduous forest alone is 38%, and the recognisably desert types — desert dune scrub 4.59% and desert thorn forest 3.76% — together come to under nine per cent. The popular image of Rajasthan's vegetation describes less than a tenth of its forest.

And the signature tree is Anogeissus pendula, the Dhok. It is the second-largest forest type at 14.72% and, as the next table shows, the most numerous tree in the state's recorded forest. Dhok is to Rajasthan what sal is to central India — the species that defines the Aravalli forest.

One line in that table is easy to miss and worth a mark: 14.33% of what is mapped is plantation or trees outside forest, not natural formation.

The species, and a contrast worth an essay

GovtSource: Forest Survey of India, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, India State of Forest Report 2023, Volume 2, section 10.22 (Rajasthan), Tables 10.22.13 to 10.22.15, top species by number and volume. ISFR is the originating body for forest-cover data and reports on a two-year cycle; the 2023 report is the current edition.

The most numerous tree in rural and urban Rajasthan is an invasive exotic. Prosopis juliflora — introduced, aggressive, and displacing native scrub — outnumbers every indigenous species outside the forest.

Now put the state tree beside it, because the comparison is the point.

GovtSource: Forest Survey of India, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, India State of Forest Report 2023, Volume 2, section 10.22 (Rajasthan), Tables 10.22.13 to 10.22.15. ISFR is the originating body for forest-cover data and reports on a two-year cycle; the 2023 report is the current edition.

Juliflora has nearly twice as many trees as Khejri and barely an eighth of the wood. Khejri carries more than eight times the volume per unit of count — because these are old, large, protected trees standing in fields, while juliflora is thin, young and everywhere.

That single pair of rows is the strongest evidence in this chapter for a Mains answer on invasive species: counting stems says one thing, measuring biomass says the opposite, and a conservation policy written from tree counts would reach the wrong conclusion. It also explains why the Khejarli sacrifice was about Khejri and not about scrub.

The major non-timber forest produce species are led by Butea monosperma (Palash, 663,560 thousand plants), then Acacia catechu (Khair), Balanites aegyptiaca, Grewia flavescens and Aegle marmelos (Bael).

Forest by altitude — a cross-check on the physiography

GovtSource: Forest Survey of India, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, India State of Forest Report 2023, Volume 2, section 10.22 (Rajasthan), Table 10.22.8, altitude-wise forest cover. ISFR is the originating body for forest-cover data and reports on a two-year cycle; the 2023 report is the current edition.

Only 216.40 sq km of Rajasthan lies above 1,000 metres — six hundredths of one per cent of the state — and it is essentially the Mount Abu massif. That independently confirms the relief table in the physiography chapter, which puts under 1% of the state above 900 m.

And note what grows there. Nearly two-thirds of that tiny high tract is under forest — 141.71 of 216.40 sq km — by far the highest forest proportion of any altitude band in Rajasthan. Height means rain, rain means trees, and Sirohi's sub-tropical hill forest is the consequence.

3. Forest fire

Fire detections in Rajasthan more than doubled in a single season.

GovtSource: Forest Survey of India, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, India State of Forest Report 2023, Volume 2, section 10.22 (Rajasthan), Table 10.22.11, SNPP-VIIRS fire detections. ISFR is the originating body for forest-cover data and reports on a two-year cycle; the 2023 report is the current edition.

The increase is concentrated in the southern Aravalli, and in some districts it is extreme:

GovtSource: Forest Survey of India, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, India State of Forest Report 2023, Volume 2, section 10.22 (Rajasthan), Table 10.22.11, district-wise fire detections. ISFR is the originating body for forest-cover data and reports on a two-year cycle; the 2023 report is the current edition.

Note on districts: ISFR 2023 reports Rajasthan as 33 districts — the pre-2023 framework, not the current 41 — so its district table cannot be mapped one-to-one onto the present administrative map.

Fire follows forest, and Rajasthan's forest is in the south. Udaipur, Pratapgarh, Rajsamand, Dungarpur, Banswara, Chittaurgarh and Sirohi are the southern districts with the highest forest cover percentages, and they are the same districts that burn. Barmer, Bikaner, Churu and Jaisalmer barely register — there is nothing there to carry a fire.

How much of the forest is fire-prone

GovtSource: Forest Survey of India, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, India State of Forest Report 2023, Volume 2, section 10.22 (Rajasthan), Table 10.22.12, fire-proneness classes. ISFR is the originating body for forest-cover data and reports on a two-year cycle; the 2023 report is the current edition.

Under half a per cent of Rajasthan's forest is extremely fire prone, and 86% is in the lowest class. Read that against the doubling above and the two are not in conflict: a small, concentrated fire-prone area in the southern hills can generate thousands of detections, while the overwhelming bulk of the state's dry, open, scattered forest simply does not carry fire.

4. The protected area network

These are legal categories under the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, and they are not interchangeable. RPSC has tested the boundary between them repeatedly — a sanctuary offered where a conservation reserve belongs, and the reverse.

National parks: why the answer is three, and why five is also printed

This is the most confusing count in the topic, and it is worth getting right because both figures come from the Government. The National Portal of India lists five national parks in Rajasthan. The Rajasthan Forest Department lists three. Neither is wrong; they are counting different things.

The three that are fully notified:

GovtSource: Rajasthan Forest Department, Details of Protected Area — the department's own listing, which carried a site-update stamp of 21 August 2026 when read. Given in preference to preparation material, several of which still print 36 conservation reserves.

The two that are still under process — and this is the Forest Department's own category, not an inference:

GovtSource: Rajasthan Forest Department, Details of Protected Area, which lists these under a separate "Under Process" heading. The National Portal of India (india.gov.in) counts five national parks for Rajasthan, including Desert and Sariska. That portal has no stable single listing page to link to, so it is cited without a URL rather than with an invented one. Both counts are reproduced on this page with the reason for the difference, because either could be keyed.

Look at the areas and the reason this matters becomes obvious. Desert National Park alone is 3,162 sq km — more than six times the combined area of all three notified national parks. Whether it is counted decides not just the number but the entire scale of Rajasthan's national park estate.

A national park is notified in stages under the Wild Life (Protection) Act, and the final notification under section 35 comes only after rights in the land have been settled. Desert National Park was declared decades ago and that settlement has never been completed, so it continues to function with the legal status of a sanctuary while being universally called a national park. The name and the legal status have simply come apart.

How to answer. If a question asks how many national parks Rajasthan has, three is the defensible answer and five is the one more often keyed — because most sources, including the National Portal, count Desert and Sariska. If the option set contains both 3 and 5, look at the wording: notified, established or final notification points to 3; a plain count, or a list naming Desert and Sariska, points to 5. Know both and know why they differ.

And note the species each is associated with, since the National Portal's listing pairs them: Ranthambhore, Sariska and Mukundra Hills with the tiger; Desert National Park with the Great Indian Bustard; Keoladeo with the Siberian crane — the bird that gave Keoladeo its fame and has not been recorded there since 2002.

A warning about the establishment years, because they are not stable. Sources that agree on the five parks disagree on when two of them were established: the National Portal gives Keoladeo 1981 and Desert National Park 1992, while widely used preparation material gives Keoladeo 1982 and Desert 1981. This page does not assert an establishment year for any of the five, because no primary notification was located for them and the variation is larger than a rounding difference. What is firmly dated is given below.

The World Heritage overlay, which is firmly dated

PrimarySource: UNESCO World Heritage Centre — Keoladeo National Park, inscribed 1985, and the Hill Forts of Rajasthan, a serial property of six forts, inscribed 2013. UNESCO is the inscribing body, so these dates are definitive.

Both are UNESCO's own dates and both matter here.

Ranthambhore Fort is one of the six Hill Forts of Rajasthan inscribed in 2013 — with Chittorgarh, Kumbhalgarh, Gagron (Jhalawar), Amber (Jaipur) and Jaisalmer — and it stands inside Ranthambhore National Park.

That produces the neatest nested fact in the whole unit: a cultural World Heritage site, inside a national park, inside a tiger reserve. The fort is in the architecture chapter of the history unit and the park is here — one place, examinable from two subjects, and a question can approach it from either side.

Keoladeo carries three designations at once — National Park, World Heritage Site (1985) and Ramsar site (1 October 1981). No other protected area in Rajasthan carries all three, which is why it is the single most question-dense square kilometre in the state. Note that its Ramsar designation is the earliest of the three and predates Sambhar's by nearly nine years.

Keoladeo is the odd one out on every axis — no tigers, a man-made wetland, a bird sanctuary in origin, and the only one carrying international designations. It is also the smallest at 28.73 sq km. That is why it is the one most often misplaced in a match-the-following.

Keoladeo has two dates, and they are not the same designation

The section above declines to give establishment years for the national parks, because sources disagree and no notification was located. For Keoladeo that gap can now be closed, and the disagreement turns out to be a confusion of two different designations.

GovtSource: PIB, Ministry of Environment and Forests, "Keoladeo National Park — Engulfed by Water Crisis", 11 February 2010, read in full, which states the 1956 sanctuary declaration, the 10 March 1982 national park notification, the October 1981 Ramsar designation and the 1985 World Heritage listing, and gives the area as 2,873 hectares. This is a ministry release rather than the notification itself, and it is dated 2010; it is used because it is the only government statement of the two dates that was located.

So both years in circulation are right, and they belong to different things. 1981 is the Ramsar year and 1982 is the national park year, and material printing "Keoladeo, established 1981" has silently swapped one designation for the other. This page still gives no establishment year for Desert National Park or Sariska, where nothing comparable was found.

Three facts from the same release are worth more than the dates. The marshes are artificial, created in 1850, and the park was the Maharaja of Bharatpur's private duck-shooting preserve before it was anything else. Water reaches it through the Ajan Bund, a dam to the south fed by the Gambhir river, and for most of the year the wetland covers only about 1,000 of the park's 2,873 hectares. A total of 375 bird species were recorded in the early years, 264 resident and 111 migratory.

That is the whole conservation argument for Keoladeo in one line: a World Heritage wetland whose water arrives from an irrigation dam. When the Gambhir was harnessed upstream in Karauli, the supply to Ajan Bund was curtailed, and the site's ecological character became a question of water releases rather than of protection. It is the strongest example this chapter offers of a protected area that cannot be protected inside its own boundary.

A third national park is under process, and it explains a common error

The department's "under process" list also contains Kumbhalgarh National Park — 462.05 sq km across Rajsamand, Udaipur and Pali.

This is almost certainly the source of the widely repeated claim that Kumbhalgarh is Rajasthan's sixth tiger reserve. A proposed national park has been converted in retelling into a tiger reserve. The national park proposal is real and on the department's own list. The tiger reserve is not — as the section above records, the state's Chief Wildlife Warden told the NTCA that Kumbhalgarh is not ideal tiger habitat. Two different claims about the same place, one with a basis and one without.

The full "under process" list runs to eight items, the others being Sariska (A) Sanctuary (3.01), Band Baretha Sanctuary extension (197.86), Dholpur Sanctuary (204.26), Gajner Wildlife Sanctuary (26.32) and Mount Abu Sanctuary (222.13).

The tiger reserves

Rajasthan has five, out of 58 in India. The National Tiger Conservation Authority's list carries two separate year columns, and confusing them is the commonest error on this table.

GovtSource: National Tiger Conservation Authority, Tiger Reserves listing — the authority's own list, giving 58 tiger reserves in India covering 84,487.83 sq km. The NTCA list carries two distinct year columns, PA Notification Year and TR Notification Year, and both are reproduced here, because a question can be built on either and they differ by more than thirty years for Ranthambhore and Sariska. The state's own Tiger Conservation Plan page still lists four reserves and has not been updated; five is correct.

Areas in sq km. India's 58 tiger reserves together cover 84,487.83 sq km.

Two years, and which one a question wants

The NTCA table gives a Protected Area notification year and a Tiger Reserve notification year, and for the two oldest Rajasthan reserves they are decades apart.

Ranthambhore's protected area dates from 1973-74 — it was among the first Project Tiger reserves — but its notification as a tiger reserve in the present statutory sense is 2007, following the creation of the NTCA in 2006 under the amended Wild Life (Protection) Act. Sariska is the same shape: protected area 1978-79, tiger reserve 2007.

So "when was Ranthambhore made a tiger reserve" has two defensible answers and the question must tell you which it means. 1973-74 and 2007 are both on NTCA's own page, in adjacent columns.

The three newer reserves carry a dash in the PA column, because each was constituted from sanctuaries that already existed rather than from a single prior protected area of its own.

What the numbers show

Ramgarh Vishdhari is the largest of the five by total area — 1,501.89 sq km — despite being second-newest and the least known. Its buffer is more than twice its core, the only Rajasthan reserve built that way, and that is what makes it large.

Ranthambhore has the largest core at 1,113.36 sq km — larger than three of the five reserves are in total.

The all-India serial numbers place Rajasthan across the whole history of Project Tiger: 7th and 11th among the earliest, then 43rd, 52nd and 55th as the network expanded.

How Dholpur–Karauli was actually constituted

The reserve was declared under section 38V of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, on the NTCA's recommendation and after consultation with an expert committee. Its Critical Tiger Habitat totals 59,964.060 hectares — the 599.64 sq km core in the table above.

It was assembled from two existing sanctuaries, not from empty ground:

• Critical Tiger Habitat–I — the entire area of Dholpur Wildlife Sanctuary, 20,426.11 ha, notified 28 September 2023.
• Critical Tiger Habitat–II — part of the National Chambal (Gharial) Sanctuary across Dholpur and Karauli, 4,540 ha in Dholpur and 6,770 ha in Karauli, together 11,310.00 ha, running from Gusai Ghat — where the Chambal sanctuary meets the boundary of Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve in Karauli — along the Kudinna reserved forest.

That last detail is the one worth carrying into an answer. Dholpur–Karauli begins where Ranthambhore ends. It is not an isolated new reserve but an extension of an existing tiger landscape along the Chambal, which is the entire conservation argument for creating it.

Sariska is the one with the history worth knowing. It lost its entire tiger population by 2004–05 and became the site of India's first tiger relocation, animals being moved in from Ranthambhore from 2008. It is the standard example in any answer about whether a reserve can be repopulated.

A claim in wide circulation that this page does not carry. Kumbhalgarh is frequently named as Rajasthan's sixth tiger reserve. It is not one. Rajasthan's Chief Wildlife Warden briefed the National Tiger Conservation Authority that Kumbhalgarh is not an ideal tiger habitat and that its prey base needs to be expanded first. Treat any option calling Kumbhalgarh a tiger reserve as wrong, and any list of six as premature.

And an inconsistency inside the state's own website, recorded rather than resolved. The Forest Department's Tiger Conservation Plan page lists four reserves; its protected-area listing and the NTCA's notification both establish five, Dholpur–Karauli having been notified in October 2023. The plan page has not been updated. Five is correct.

The twenty-six sanctuaries, as the department lists them

The sanctuary list is the second most-set list in this unit after the conservation reserves, and RPSC sets it as a sanctuary-to-district match. This is the Forest Department's own listing, with its own areas.

GovtSource: Rajasthan Forest Department, Details of Protected Area, section C, read on 28 August 2026, when the page carried a site-update stamp of 27 August 2026. Districts and areas are the department's own; the net total excludes overlaps with national parks and among sanctuaries. The same twenty-six appear on the department's Protected Area Network map, 2026.

Four things in that table are worth more than the list itself.

Desert National Park Sanctuary is more than a third of all sanctuary area in the state, 3,162 of 9,145 sq km, and it is here rather than among the national parks for the reason given above. The three largest sanctuaries together are more than half the total.

Shergarh is in Baran. It is the row RPSC used in 2023 as "Shergarh — Bundi", and it is the trap that returned the following year on Sorsan. Learn Shergarh and Sorsan together as the two Baran entries most often offered as Bundi.

Dholpur holds three sanctuaries, Ramsagar, Van Vihar and Kesarbagh, more than any other district, and all three are small. A district with no famous protected area holds the most of them.

Two district names in the department's own column are no longer districts. The listing gives Jamwa Ramgarh as "Jaipur Rural" and Nahargarh as "Jaipur, Jaipur Rural", and Jaipur Rural was abolished in the December 2024 reorganisation. The department's page has not been updated to the 41-district map, and the same is true of several conservation-reserve rows below. Where the current district is asked, Jaipur is the answer.

Conservation reserves — the repeating question

Conservation reserves have been set in 2016, 2021, 2023 and 2024 — four papers out of six. The Gogelav question of 2021 reappeared almost verbatim in 2023. No other list in this unit has that record, and the reason is structural: it is a closed, published, growing list of small areas, which is ideal material for a match-the-following.

Pairs RPSC has actually used:

GovtSource: Rajasthan Forest Department, Details of Protected Area.

Watch the Baran-for-Bundi substitution. RPSC used it on a sanctuary in 2023 (Shergarh, which is Baran and was offered as Bundi) and on a conservation reserve in 2024 (Sorsan, same swap). Baran and Bundi are both Hadoti districts and both begin with B, which is exactly why the swap keeps working.

All forty, because the examiner draws from the whole list

The section above gives the seven pairs RPSC has already used. The list is closed and published, so here is the rest of it, in the department's own order and with its own areas.

GovtSource: Rajasthan Forest Department, Details of Protected Area, section D, read on 28 August 2026 with a site-update stamp of 27 August 2026. The serial numbers, spellings, districts and areas are the department's; areas are rounded here to two decimals from the department's own longer figures. The forty names also appear on the department's Protected Area Network map, 2026.

The four superlatives, derived by sorting the department's own list rather than taken from anyone's notes.

Baleshwar is the largest at 221.69 sq km, then Shahbad 189.40 and Shahabad Talheti 178.84. Beed Muhana B is the smallest at 0.10 sq km, about ten hectares, followed by Rotu 0.73 and Sorsan III 0.76. Baran has seven, more than any other district, being Shahbad, Shahabad Talheti, Banjh Amli, Ramgarh and the three Sorsans, and Baran is also the district with the largest protected forest in the state. Bisalpur stands first in the department's serial order, and first in the Environment Department's older listing too, which is the basis on which it is usually called the state's first conservation reserve; no notification date is published on either page, so this page attaches no year to it.

Now the district column, which is where this list is dangerous. Five of the districts the department names no longer exist. Kekri, Neem Ka Thana, Sanchor, Shahpura and Jaipur Rural were among the districts abolished in the December 2024 reorganisation, which left Rajasthan with 41 districts and 425 tehsils. On the current map they read: Kekri to Ajmer, Neem Ka Thana to Sikar, Sanchor to Jalore, Shahpura to Bhilwara, Jaipur Rural to Jaipur.

That reconciles two answers that look contradictory. RPSC's 2024 key treats Rankhar as Jalore and the department's page says Sanchor; both are right at different dates, and Jalore is right now. Bisalpur is the same case in reverse: the department says Kekri, older official listings say Tonk, and the Bisalpur reservoir sits in Todaraisingh tehsil, which the state's current tehsil roster places in Tonk. Where a question gives a pre-2023 district, answer on the pre-2023 map; where it gives none, use the 41-district map.

GovtSource for the district reconciliation: Government of Rajasthan, Board of Revenue, SDO-wise Tehsil list, updated 22 January 2026, which enumerates the 41 districts and their tehsils. Kekri, Neem Ka Thana, Sanchor, Shahpura and Jaipur Rural appear in it as tehsils, not as districts.

The three newest, and why their numbering is muddled everywhere else. The department's Annual Administrative Report 2025-26 states that Buchara Main and Mokla were declared during 2025-26 and that the state then had 39 conservation reserves. The department's web listing carries 40, with Khejadli Kala (Jodhpur, 1.51 sq km) at number 40, added after the report was compiled. So the sequence is Mokla and Buchara Main in 2025-26, and Khejadli Kala fortieth and most recent. Preparation material that gives all three the same year, or that numbers Mokla 38th on one line and 40th on the next, is copying an ordinal it has not checked.

And note the name at number 40. Khejadli is the village of the 1730 Bishnoi sacrifice that this chapter cites for the Khejri. Nearly three centuries later the same village name enters the protected-area register.

GovtSource: Rajasthan Forest Department, Annual Administrative Report 2025-26, section 6.3.4, for the two declarations of 2025-26 and the count of 39; the protected-area listing for the fortieth. Both are the department's own, one printed and one live, and the difference between them is a date rather than an error.

Eco-sensitive zones, and the one notified in January 2026

An eco-sensitive zone is not a protected area. It is a regulated buffer outside one, notified by the Union Ministry under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, in which mining, polluting industry and large new construction are prohibited or controlled while existing land use continues.

The Supreme Court requires an eco-sensitive zone around every protected area in the state, and Rajasthan has twenty-four to declare. Nineteen now carry final notifications. At the close of the department's 2025-26 report the figure was eighteen, with draft notifications issued for Sariska, Ramgarh Vishdhari Tiger Reserve, Kumbhalgarh and the Desert National Park, and proposals sent for the last two, Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve and the National Chambal Gharial Sanctuary.

Kumbhalgarh moved from draft to final on 16 January 2026, and it is the notification to know.

GovtSource: Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Eco-Sensitive Zone notification for Kumbhalgarh Wildlife Sanctuary, S.O. 238(E) of 16 January 2026, the gazette text itself, read in full and hosted on the Rajasthan Forest Department's Notified ESZ of Rajasthan page, which lists all nineteen final notifications with their S.O. numbers and dates. The count of twenty-four required, and the position before Kumbhalgarh, are from the department's Annual Administrative Report 2025-26, section 6.3.8.

The notification's own description of the sanctuary is the part worth an answer. Kumbhalgarh covers 610.528 sq km across parts of Rajsamand, Pali and Udaipur, about 80 km north of Udaipur, between 73°02′ and 73°30′ E and 25°00′ and 25°40′ N. The Ministry's stated reason for protecting it is that the Kumbhalgarh hills act as a barrier against the eastward spread of the desert.

And it is a watershed divide, which ties this chapter to the drainage in the physiography chapter. The eastern side of the sanctuary is held to be the source of the Banas, which reaches the Bay of Bengal. Water on the western slope leaves as the Sukri, Mithri, Sumer and Kot, all tributaries of the Luni, which ends in the Arabian Sea. One sanctuary sits on the line between India's two oceans, and that is a far better sentence in an answer than the area figure.

5. Sariska, and why it is the most quotable conservation story in India

On 28 June 2026 the Union Environment Minister inaugurated a National Workshop on Tiger Re-introduction at Alwar, organised by the NTCA with the Government of Rajasthan, to mark eighteen years of tiger re-introduction in Sariska. The claim made there is the one to carry into an answer, and it is the Government's own:

Sariska represents the world's first successful scientific reintroduction of tigers into a landscape where the species had become locally extinct.

GovtSource: PIB, National Workshop on Tiger Re-introduction, Alwar, 28 June 2026 (Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change), read in full.

From zero to fifty-six in eighteen years is the entire argument for active management, and it is why Sariska appears in Mains answers far more often than its size warrants.

The comparison the Minister drew is the part most candidates miss. Reintroduction succeeded at Sariska and Panna and failed at Satkosia in Odisha — and the reason given for the difference was community support. Not habitat, not prey base, not funding. A conservation programme that the surrounding population does not accept fails even where the ecology permits it, and that is a far stronger point to make than reciting reserve names.

Three publications were released at the workshop: the Road Map on Active Management of Tigers in India, a Booklet on Reintroduction and Recovery of Tigers in India, and the Annual Report of Project Cheetah (September 2024 – December 2025).

Also worth holding: India's tiger reserves rose from 46 to 58 over the past decade, and India met the St Petersburg Declaration target of doubling its wild tiger population by 2022.

The translocation claim that does not survive this chapter's own evidence

A December 2025 move is being described everywhere as India's first inter-state tiger translocation. It was not, and the refutation is already on this page.

On 21 December 2025 an Indian Air Force MI-17 carried the tigress PN-224 from Pench Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh to Ramgarh Vishdhari, and she was released into the forest in Bundi district a week later. The event is real and was widely reported, but it appears on no government page that was found, so it is recorded here as reported rather than as sourced.

The superlative attached to it is what fails. Tigers were moved from Madhya Pradesh to Satkosia in Odisha in 2018, which is the inter-state relocation the Union Environment Minister himself referred to at the Alwar workshop of June 2026, cited in this section, as the reintroduction that failed for want of community support. A move in 2025 cannot be the first when the Government's own account of a 2018 move is the standing example. At most the 2025 operation is India's first inter-state tiger translocation by air, which is a claim about the helicopter and not about the translocation.

The internal check is worth naming, because it is the cheapest one available. The same preparation material that calls the 2025 Pench move "the first" calls an earlier Bandhavgarh-to-Mukundara move "the second" a few pages later. Two claims in one book that cannot both be true are enough to reject the superlative without any outside source at all.

Rajasthan's first Namo Biodiversity Park

Rajasthan's first Namo Biodiversity Park, named NAMO VAN, was inaugurated on 5 October 2025 at Pratap Bandh, Alwar, by the Union Environment Minister with the Rajasthan Forest Minister. Note the district: Alwar again — the same district as Sariska, and the site of the June 2026 tiger workshop. Alwar has become the state's conservation showcase, which is itself a usable observation.

The biological parks, in the order they opened

RPSC has already set the Rajasthan Forestry and Biodiversity Project through its biological parks, so the order and the current list are both worth holding.

GovtSource: Rajasthan Forest Department, Annual Administrative Report 2025-26, section 6.3.9, which gives the opening dates and the visitor and revenue figures for 2024-25, and the department's Zoo, Biological Park, Rescue Centre and Bird Park page for the established and forthcoming lists. Months are given rather than exact dates because the report was read as a scanned document.

Four are working, and the department's own page names four more as upcoming: Marudhara (Bikaner), Bharatpur, Katighati (Alwar) and Kumbha (Chittorgarh). The Chittorgarh proposal is for the foot of the fort and the Bharatpur one for the Sukhashila area of Bandh Baretha under the 2025-26 budget. Note that Pushkar is not on the department's list, in either category.

The Udaipur Bird Park opened in May 2022 and is the state's only one.

On visitor numbers, Nahargarh leads the biological parks with 3.40 lakh visitors in 2024-25, ahead of Machia at 2.89 lakh and Sajjangarh at 2.59 lakh; the Jaipur zoo, which is not a biological park, drew more than any of them at 6.95 lakh.

And the safaris, which are the same story in a different form. Jaipur now runs five: lion and tiger safaris inside Nahargarh Biological Park, separate leopard safaris in Jhalana and Amagarh, and a fifth at Beed Papad, opened 5 June 2025. Leopard safaris also run at Kumbhalgarh and Ravli Todgarh. The state's conservation tourism is being built on the leopard rather than the tiger, because the leopard is where the animals actually are.

And a species question Rajasthan is part of

Under Project Dolphin, launched on 15 August 2020, Rajasthan is one of the identified river-dolphin hotspots — alongside Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and Lakshadweep. The Gangetic dolphin's Rajasthan habitat is the Chambal, which is the same river that gave the state the National Chambal Gharial Sanctuary and, through it, half of Dholpur–Karauli Tiger Reserve. One river carries three separate conservation stories in this chapter.

The Wild Life (Protection) Act was amended in December 2022 to recognise the Gangetic and Indus river dolphins as distinct species under Schedule I.

Godawan: what the state actually runs

The Great Indian Bustard is the state bird, is Critically Endangered, and is the one species for which Rajasthan runs a captive-breeding programme of national importance.

The programme rests on a tripartite agreement between the Government of India, the Wildlife Institute of India and the State Government, under which artificial breeding of the Godawan was begun in the Sam area of Jaisalmer district. The department's report for 2025-26 states that 68 chicks were being reared. In March 2026 the Union Environment Minister put the number of birds in captivity at 70, with two chicks hatched that week, and said some of the year's captive-bred chicks would be soft-released into the wild.

A second bird runs alongside it and is almost never mentioned. A breeding centre for the Lesser Florican, the Kharmor, operates at Arwar in Ajmer district, where chicks are being reared. Note the tie: the Kharmor Conservation Reserve in the list above is at the same place, so the reserve and the breeding centre are one conservation effort under two headings.

GovtSources: Rajasthan Forest Department, Annual Administrative Report 2025-26, section 6.3.3 "Project Godawan", for the tripartite agreement, the Sam breeding centre, the 68 chicks and the Lesser Florican centre at Arwar; and Prasar Bharati News Services, 13 March 2026, reporting the Union Minister's statement that the captive population had reached 70 in the programme's fourth year. The two figures are months apart and are given with their dates rather than merged.

Why this matters beyond the bird. Desert National Park is the Godawan's habitat and is the protected area whose legal status is unsettled, as section 4 sets out. The species with the strongest claim on the state's conservation effort lives in the one protected area that has never been finally notified, and that sentence is the whole of Rajasthan's conservation problem in miniature.

6. The national frame: India's Seventh National Report to the CBD

India submitted its Seventh National Report (NR-7) to the Convention on Biological Diversity on 26 February 2026, ahead of the 28 February due date, under Article 26 of the Convention and CoP Decision 15/6. It is the most current official statement of India's biodiversity position and is prime material for 2026.

GovtSource: PIB, India Submits Seventh National Report to the Convention on Biological Diversity, 16 March 2026.

The numbers NR-7 states

GovtSource: PIB, India Submits Seventh National Report to the CBD, 16 March 2026 — figures as stated by NR-7 at submission. Note that a separate March-2025 release gives 573 wildlife sanctuaries against NR-7's 574; the difference is a year of additions, not an error, and both are dated here.

And one absence worth knowing, because a negative is as testable as a positive. India has 18 Biosphere Reserves and 33 Elephant Reserves. Rajasthan has neither — no biosphere reserve and no elephant reserve. Rajasthan's protected-area profile is built on national parks, sanctuaries, conservation reserves and tiger reserves, and an option placing a biosphere or elephant reserve in the state is wrong on that ground alone.

Species estimates:

GovtSource: PIB, India Submits Seventh National Report to the CBD, 16 March 2026; the river-dolphin total also appears in the Wildlife Institute of India's Ganges River Dolphin pages, WII being the coordinating institute for the estimation.

Agrobiodiversity: 22 agrobiodiversity hotspots, 769 Crop Wild Relatives prioritised across 171 native crops and 230 native animal breeds.

Access and benefit sharing: the National Biodiversity Authority has issued over 5,600 ABS agreements disbursing ₹140 crore, with 2,76,653 Biodiversity Management Committees and 2,72,648 People's Biodiversity Registers.

The five statutes NR-7 names as the legal backbone — and the last is the one candidates forget: the Indian Forest Act, 1927; the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972; the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986; the Biological Diversity Act, 2002; and the Van Panchayat Act, 1931.

Two initiatives it credits by name: Mission LiFE and Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam; and the single-window environmental clearance hub PARIVESH.

Set the Ramsar line against Rajasthan. India went from 26 Ramsar sites in 2014 to 99, and Rajasthan went from two to five — all three additions falling in 2025. The state's Ramsar list had not changed in thirty-five years and then trebled in a single year, which makes it one of the fastest-moving facts in this whole unit and the reason most material still prints two.

Two national totals are in circulation and both are official. NR-7, submitted in February 2026, states 98. The Ministry's own list as on 21 April 2026 states 99 — the additional site being Sheikha Jheel Bird Sanctuary in Uttar Pradesh, designated 19 January 2026 and declared on 21 April 2026. Quote 99 with the April date, or 98 as NR-7's figure at submission, but do not mix the number with the wrong source. Rajasthan's five is unaffected either way.

Two founding dates that are printed wrong almost everywhere

Both belong to the general-biodiversity block that RPSC sets alongside the state material, and both are usually got wrong in the same way.

The IUCN was founded on 5 October 1948 at Fontainebleau in France, not at Gland. Gland, in Switzerland, is its headquarters, and the confusion is between where a body was created and where it now sits. An option pairing "IUCN, 1948, Gland" is testing exactly that.

The IUCN Red Data Book was first published in 1964, not 1972. 1972 is a crowded year in environmental history, carrying the Stockholm Conference, UNEP and the Wild Life (Protection) Act, which is precisely why a date drifts into it.

PrimarySource: IUCN, "Seventy-five years of experience", the union's own account of its founding at Fontainebleau on 5 October 1948, and its own statement that the Red Data Book was first published in 1964. The founding body is the authority for its own founding.

7. Wetlands

Use ISRO's figures, not the ones in circulation. The National Wetland Atlas: Rajasthan, mapped by the Space Applications Centre at 1:50,000 and published August 2010, is the authoritative inventory. Preparation material still quotes a 1998 assessment that gives less than half the area.

GovtSources: National Wetland Atlas: Rajasthan, Space Applications Centre (ISRO), Ahmedabad, for the Ministry of Environment and Forests, ref. SAC/EPSA/AFEG/NWIA/ATLAS/31/2010, published August 2010, mapped at 1:50,000, read directly. The superseded column is SRSAC & SAC, 1998, which counted only wetlands of 56.25 ha and above.

Give 2.29%. The 1998 figure counted only wetlands of 56.25 hectares and above; the atlas maps everything down to 2.25 hectares and counts smaller ones separately, which is why both the area and the count jump.

The four numbers worth memorising

GovtSource: National Wetland Atlas: Rajasthan (ISRO/SAC, August 2010), Table 4.

By category — and the trap inside it

GovtSource: National Wetland Atlas: Rajasthan (ISRO/SAC, August 2010), Table 4 — category areas, shares and counts.

The trap is the inversion between the first and third rows. Rivers and streams hold the most area — nearly forty per cent — from just 648 wetlands. Tanks and ponds are the most numerous by far, 10,731 of them, but hold only nineteen per cent.

So "the largest wetland category in Rajasthan" has two correct answers depending on whether the question means area or number. By area it is rivers and streams; by number it is tanks and ponds. Read which the stem asks for.

And note what that says about the state. Nearly two-thirds of Rajasthan's wetland area is river, reservoir or barrage — flowing or dammed water — while the tens of thousands of tanks and ponds that dominate the landscape and the folk memory are, in area, a fifth of the total.

The seasonal swing

GovtSource: National Wetland Atlas: Rajasthan (ISRO/SAC, August 2010) — open-water spread, post- and pre-monsoon.

Rajasthan's open water more than doubles after the monsoon and more than halves before it. These are seasonal wetlands, not permanent ones, and that single pair of figures is the most useful thing to be able to quote about them.

One classification oddity worth knowing. The atlas records one coastal wetland in Rajasthan — 18,950 ha of intertidal mud flats, 2.42% of the state's wetland area — in a landlocked state. It is a saline flat classified under the coastal category by the mapping scheme. If an option says Rajasthan has no coastal wetland category, the atlas disagrees, and the reason is classification rather than geography.

The notified wetlands, which are a different list from the Ramsar list

A Ramsar site is designated internationally. A notified wetland is declared by the state under the Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2017, and the two lists barely overlap.

Rajasthan has notified 76 wetlands across 23 districts.

GovtSource: State Wetland Authority, Rajasthan, Final Wetland Notification, the authority's own district-and-wetland listing with a gazette notification linked against each entry, read on 28 August 2026; the page carried a last-updated stamp of 18 August 2026. The counts here are from sorting that listing, which runs to serial number 76.

Baran again, and it is becoming a pattern. Baran has the most notified wetlands, the most conservation reserves and the largest protected forest in the state, and it appears in almost no popular account of Rajasthan's environment. If one district name is worth carrying out of this chapter besides Udaipur, it is Baran.

Menar is on both lists, notified by the state and designated under Ramsar in 2025, which is the usual route: state notification first, international designation after. Bisalpur is notified in Tonk and is a conservation reserve at the same place, the third such double designation in this chapter after Khichan and Menar.

Preparation material still prints a count in the forties. The state authority's own current listing is 76.

8. The Chambal, gharials and river dolphins

Rajasthan's most important aquatic habitat is not a lake. It is a river.

GovtPrimarySource: the Ganges River Dolphin survey report covering Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, read directly; the estimation is coordinated by the Wildlife Institute of India under Project Dolphin.

A single protected area jointly managed by three states is unusual in India, and it is the reason the Chambal appears in this chapter, in the tiger-reserve section as half of Dholpur–Karauli, and in the physiography chapter as the eastern boundary.

The Chambal is described as a clean river — fewer pollutants and high dissolved oxygen — which is the ecological precondition for everything below.

Gharial

The Chambal holds 80 to 90 per cent of the recorded global gharial population. Not of India's — of the world's.

A survey covering 242 km recorded 212 gharials, though the report notes the survey method was designed for dolphins rather than crocodilians and so gives a relative encounter rate rather than a population estimate. That caveat is worth reproducing, because the 212 figure circulates without it.

River dolphins

Under Project Dolphin, the first-ever national river dolphin estimation reported 6,327 riverine dolphins in India. Rajasthan's share is small and precisely stated:

GovtPrimarySource: the Ganges River Dolphin survey report (Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh), read directly — survey stretch Nagar to Pinahat, 96 km, 10–12 January 2022. The report's own caveat is reproduced on this page: its method suits dolphins rather than crocodilians, so the gharial figure is a relative encounter rate, not a population estimate. National coordination by the Wildlife Institute of India.

The Rajasthan survey stretch was Nagar to Pinahat, 96 km of the Chambal, surveyed 10–12 January 2022 over three days by boat in tandem, as part of a 195 km effort from Nagar to Bhind across Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.

Learn the two numbers as a pair. The least count of 76 is what was actually seen; the estimate of 95 is what the statistics infer, with a confidence range of 87 to 105. A question offering both is testing whether you know the difference between a count and an estimate — and in survey work they are never the same number.

What else the Chambal holds

At least 78 species of wetland birds and seven species of freshwater turtles, together with the Marsh Crocodile (mugger), the Smooth-coated Otter, and breeding colonies of the Indian Skimmer — the National Chambal Sanctuary being one of India's important aquatic bird areas and a significant Skimmer breeding site.

Three turtles of high conservation concern occur here: the critically endangered Three-Striped Roofed Turtle and Red-crowned Roofed Turtle, and the endangered Ganges Soft-shelled Turtle.

Put the whole list together and the Chambal's claim becomes clear. One river carries the world's gharial population, a river dolphin population, three threatened turtles, the Indian Skimmer's breeding grounds, half a tiger reserve and a state boundary. If a Mains answer needs a single example of an ecosystem doing many jobs at once, this is it.

9. Ramsar sites — now five, and three of them are new

Rajasthan has five wetlands of international importance. Three were designated in 2025, so almost all preparation material — and an earlier version of this page — still says two.

GovtSource: Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Ramsar Sites of India, as on 21.04.2026, where the state is listed as "Rajasthan (5)" at serial numbers 58 to 62. MoEFCC is the designating authority's national focal point, and the file carries its own date. The five are also listed by the State Wetland Authority, Rajasthan.

Four things in that table are examinable and three of them are new.

Keoladeo is 1981, not 1990. It is India's earliest Ramsar designations along with Chilika, and it predates Sambhar by nearly a decade. Any source pairing the two under one year is wrong, and this page was wrong in exactly that way until it was corrected.

Sambhar dwarfs the rest. At 24,000 hectares it is more than eight times Keoladeo and roughly forty times the three new sites combined. It remains India's largest inland salt lake.

Khichan is the smallest Ramsar site in the state at 54.187 hectares — barely half a square kilometre. Its significance is not area but birds: Khichan is the Demoiselle Crane village, where the cranes are fed communally each winter. The crane is the kurjan of Rajasthani folk song, which appears in the folk-music chapter among the songs of the desert.

Menar is a community-conservation case, and that is why it was designated. A freshwater monsoon wetland complex of three ponds in Udaipur, it supports 110 waterbird species, 67 of them migratory, and is recognised as one of the best examples of community-led conservation in Rajasthan — the villagers of Menar themselves preventing poaching and fishing. A Ramsar site created by a village's own restraint is the strongest single example this unit offers for a Mains answer on community conservation.

Note also that the official list carries two date columns — a date of designation and a separate date of declaration (Menar and Khichan: designated 19 Feb 2025, declared 4 June 2025; Siliserh: designated 7 July 2025, declared 12 December 2025). The same two-date structure as the tiger reserves, and the same risk.

The State Wetland Authority

The State Wetland Authority, Rajasthan (SWAR) was constituted by government order on 27 November 2019 and reconstituted on 17 July 2020, under the Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2017. The Minister of Forest and Environment chairs it and the Chief Secretary is Vice-Chairperson.

RPSC's 2016 question keyed Sambhar because Keoladeo was not among the options. Do not read that key as saying Sambhar is the state's only Ramsar site — and note that a question set today would have five to choose from rather than two.

Sambhar's salinity is not an accident of chemistry but of drainage, which ties this back to the physiography chapter: the Nagaur uplands have inland drainage, so water that arrives has no outlet to the sea, evaporates where it stands, and concentrates its salt.

10. Institutions, policy and state symbols

GovtSource: Rajasthan Forest Department. The State Wetland Authority, Rajasthan is constituted under the Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2017.

The 2010 cluster is worth noticing as a cluster — the first state forest policy, the biodiversity rules and the biodiversity board all arrive in the same year. One date answers three questions.

The Forest Policy 2023, and the target that is not what it is usually quoted as

Rajasthan replaced its 2010 forest policy in 2023, and the new policy's target is the single most misquoted number in this topic.

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Rajasthan Forest Policy 2023, read in full: paragraph 1.2 for the 2010 aim, paragraph 2.16 for the GSDP share, and section 3, "Vision", for the target; the policy is listed on the department's Forest Policy page beside the 2010 policy it replaces. The document carries no date of release beyond the year, so none is given here.

Read the noun in the target, because it is the whole point. The policy commits to 20% vegetation cover, not 20% forest cover. Rajasthan's forest cover is 4.84% and its recorded forest area is about 9.6%, so a 20% forest target would be an impossible quadrupling; a 20% vegetation-cover target, counting trees outside forest, is a demanding but arithmetically real goal from a base the policy itself puts at 7.42%. On ISFR 2023's figures that base is now 8.00%. Anything reporting the policy as promising "20% forest cover" has changed what the state actually undertook.

And the twenty years belongs to the policy's own sentence, not to a calculation from its year of issue.

One consequence runs through the rest of this chapter. Because the target is vegetation cover outside forests, the state's effort has moved to plantation on panchayat land, farm bunds and roadsides rather than to enlarging the legal forest, which is why Rajasthan's tree cover is the second-largest in India while its forest cover falls.

What the state is actually planting

GovtSources: Rajasthan Forest Department, Annual Administrative Report 2025-26, the foreword and executive summary for the plantation figures and the Green Aravali districts, and section 4.3.1 for the RFBDP costs and targets; and Government of Rajasthan, Finance Department, Press Note, Budget 2025-26, which announces the first Green Budget, the 10-crore plantation under Mission Hariyalo Rajasthan, a Trees Outside Forest and Agro-Forestry Policy, and the Green Aravali Development Project at ₹250 crore. Plantation figures are departmental progress to 31 December 2025, not audited results.

Two names are being confused with each other and should not be.

The Aravalli Green Wall Project is a central project, launched by the Union Environment Minister on 25 March 2023 at Tikli in Gurugram, to green a five-kilometre buffer around the Aravalli range across four states, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Delhi, where the Aravalli landscape spans over six million hectares. Its stated purpose is to stop the eastward expansion of the Thar and to restore water bodies.

The Green Aravali Development Project is a Rajasthan scheme, announced in the 2025-26 state budget with ₹250 crore for 19 districts. The ₹250 crore and the nineteen districts belong to the state project, not to the central one, and material that attaches them to the Aravalli Green Wall has merged two programmes.

GovtSource: PIB, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, 25 March 2023, read in full, for the Aravalli Green Wall launch, the four states and the five-kilometre buffer. The release states no length for the corridor; the widely quoted "1,400 km long" appears in press coverage and not in the Government's own text, and it is therefore not asserted here.

Orans, and the category Rajasthan does not use

Section 4 records that the Forest Department's protected-area listing carries no community reserves at all. That absence is now the subject of a Supreme Court direction, and it is the most examinable conservation development of the last two years.

An oran is a sacred grove, land set aside in the name of a deity and protected by the village around it, and Rajasthan has more of them than any other state. They are the living form of exactly what the Wild Life (Protection) Act calls a community reserve: private or community land volunteered for conservation.

On 18 December 2024, in the T.N. Godavarman line of proceedings, the Supreme Court directed the Government of Rajasthan to map and classify sacred groves as forests, and to declare them, where appropriate, as community reserves under section 36C of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, with the communities recognised as holding community forest resource rights under section 5 of the Forest Rights Act, 2006. The Court applied the deemed-forest test of a compact area of at least five hectares carrying at least 200 naturally growing trees per hectare. It was told that the state's own list identified about 5,000 orans against an estimated 25,000.

The state had already begun. The Forest Department carries a notification dated 1 February 2024 declaring orans and ecological areas as deemed forest, published district by district for 32 districts.

GovtSources: Rajasthan Forest Department, Notification regarding declaration of Oran and Ecological areas as deemed Forest, dated 01.02.2024, which carries a separate district file for each of 32 districts. The Supreme Court's directions are in In Re: T.N. Godavarman Thirumulpad v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 997, decided 18 December 2024 by a bench of Justices B. R. Gavai, S. V. N. Bhatti and Sandeep Mehta, on an application concerning the orans of Rajasthan. The judgment text itself could not be retrieved — the Supreme Court's own judgment endpoint returned an empty response — so the neutral citation, date and bench are given from concurring legal reports, and the directions as those reports set them out. They agree on the substance: mapping and classification of sacred groves as forests, declaration under section 36C where appropriate, community forest resource rights under the Forest Rights Act, the deemed-forest test, a supervising committee of MoEFCC and the state Forest Department, and adherence to the Central Empowered Committee's 2005 report. Every figure attributed to the Court here is one those reports state it was told, not a finding of this page. The Rajasthan Forest Policy 2023 separately commits, at paragraph 6.5.11, that "Devans/Orans/Sacred Groves shall be duly identified".

Put the three facts side by side and the answer writes itself. Rajasthan has an estimated 25,000 sacred groves, a legal category designed for precisely them, and zero community reserves declared. The AFD-financed project above budgets oran development over 3,000 hectares, and the Forest Policy 2023 undertakes to identify them. The gap between an old institution and a modern legal category, and what it would take to close it, is the strongest Mains material this chapter contains.

The Amrita Devi Smriti Puraskar

The state's own conservation award is named for the woman who died at Khejarli in 1730, and the department invites applications for it every year.

GovtSource: Rajasthan Forest Department, notification inviting applications for the Amrita Devi Smriti Puraskar for the year 2025, issued by the Chief Conservator of Forests (Planning) and digitally signed 3 July 2026, with applications open to 30 September 2026; the award's rules and application route are on the department's Amrita Devi Awards page. Applications are accepted only online, through the state single sign-on portal.

Note the structure rather than the amounts. The larger prize goes to an institution and the smaller ones to individuals, which inverts the usual pattern and is the state saying, in the form of a prize list, that conservation here is collective. It is the same argument the Menar designation and the oran direction make from two other directions.

State symbols

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan state-symbol notifications, as listed by the Rajasthan Forest Department.

The two-animal split is the trap — Rajasthan has a wild state animal and a separate state livestock animal, so "the state animal of Rajasthan" has two defensible answers and the question must specify which.

The Khejri carries the Khejarli episode from the history unit, where 363 Bishnois died in 1730 protecting these trees. A state tree chosen for what people once died defending is worth a sentence in any answer about community conservation.

11. Nowadays — what changed in 2026

Covering 1 January to 23 August 2026. Updated every month until Prelims and Mains. Every item is dated.

The state budget put ₹1,500 crore behind wildlife

11 February 2026 — the Rajasthan Budget 2026-27 carries a full Green Growth and Environmental Sustainability pillar, the ninth of ten. These are state allocations for this chapter's subject matter and they are quotable by name and figure.

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Finance Department, Press Note — Budget 2026-27, 11 February 2026, Ninth Pillar. These are budget provisions, not completed works — an announcement is not an achievement, and none of these should be written as done.

Note where the avian-disease centres are going: Bharatpur and Sambhar. Those are the state's two great bird wetlands — Keoladeo and the Ramsar salt lake — and Sambhar has a history of mass bird deaths. The siting is the argument, and it makes a precise example for an answer on wetland bird conservation.

Kumbhalgarh got an eco-sensitive zone

16 January 2026 — the Union Ministry notified an eco-sensitive zone of 243 sq km around Kumbhalgarh Wildlife Sanctuary, extending up to one kilometre from the boundary and covering 94 villages, by S.O. 238(E). That takes Rajasthan from eighteen final eco-sensitive-zone notifications to nineteen, of the twenty-four the Supreme Court requires. Full treatment in section 4 above.

Read it beside the tiger-reserve question. Kumbhalgarh is the sanctuary most often, and wrongly, called Rajasthan's sixth tiger reserve. What it actually received in 2026 was an eco-sensitive zone, which regulates land use outside the sanctuary and is not a tiger reserve, not a national park, and not a change in the sanctuary's own status. A question set on this in 2026 will be set on the eco-sensitive zone.

Sariska, and the tiger record

28 June 2026 — the National Workshop on Tiger Re-introduction was held at Alwar, with Sariska now carrying 56 tigers and described as a potential source population for reintroduction elsewhere. A reserve that lost every tiger in 2004 is now exporting them. Full treatment in section 5 above — this remains the single most quotable conservation story in India, and 2026 strengthened it.

India's report to the CBD

16 March 2026 — India submitted its Seventh National Report (NR-7) to the Convention on Biological Diversity, reporting all 23 National Biodiversity Targets as "on track to achieve", tracked through 142 indicators across 33 ministries. Section 6 above carries the figures.

The Ramsar count moved again

21 April 2026 — the Ministry's list reached 99 Ramsar sites across 26 States and Union Territories, totalling 13,84,181.416 hectares. Rajasthan stays at five. The 99th is Sheikha Jheel Bird Sanctuary in Uttar Pradesh, designated 19 January 2026 and declared on 21 April 2026.

This is the fastest-moving number in the unit. It was 98 when NR-7 was submitted in February and 99 by April. Check the count against the Ministry's dated list before quoting it.

What has not changed, and is worth saying so

The forest figures on this page are still current. ISFR 2023 remains the latest edition — the report is biennial and no ISFR 2025 has been published as of 23 August 2026 — so 16,548.21 sq km and 4.84% are the current forest-cover figures, not stale ones. Anyone quoting a newer forest-cover figure for Rajasthan is quoting something that has not been published.

Rajasthan still has five tiger reserves. Kumbhalgarh has not been notified, and the claim that it is the sixth remains wrong. Section 4 sets out why, including the Chief Wildlife Warden's own briefing to the NTCA.

Rajasthan still has three notified national parks, with Desert and Sariska still recorded by the Forest Department as under process, and Kumbhalgarh National Park (462.05 sq km) also under process.

The conservation-reserve count is now forty, and the department's printed report says thirty-nine. Both are the department's own, one live and one compiled earlier in the year, and the fortieth is Khejadli Kala in Jodhpur. Anything printing 36, 37 or 38 is at least two years out of date.

Rajasthan still has no community reserve. The Supreme Court's direction of 18 December 2024 on orans has not yet produced one, and until it does, the fourth category of the Wild Life (Protection) Act remains empty in this state.

The Rajasthan Forest Policy 2023 has not been replaced or amended, and its target remains 20% vegetation cover within twenty years.

What RPSC has actually asked

Aggregator Watch

Practice

• Practice: Natural Vegetation, Biodiversity and Conservation — 45 questions built from this chapter: 35 MCQs, 5 assertion-reason and 5 match-the-following, plus flashcards and rapid one-liners.
• Every RAS Prelims Geography question, 2013–2024 — all 78 official questions with RPSC's keys and worked explanations.

More in This Series

• Rajasthan: Location, Extent and Physiography
• Rajasthan's Climate: Characteristics, Regions and the Monsoon
• Soils of Rajasthan: Classification, Distribution and Soil Health
• Agriculture of Rajasthan: Crops, Zones and the State's Standing
• Tourism in Rajasthan: Sites, Visitors and the World Heritage Count — the relief and drainage this vegetation sits on
• Every RAS Prelims Geography question, 2013–2024 — all 78 official questions with keys and explanations
• Caution for Readers — the claims across this site that are genuinely unsettled

Sources & Verification

Written on 23 August 2026.

Source priority: Rajasthan government and departmental sources first, then central primary sources where the state publishes nothing comparable or a national figure is in question. No coaching material or aggregator has been used for any figure on this page. Every table above names its source beneath it and links to the document.

The documents themselves

Government pages and PDFs are occasionally moved. All links above were working on 23 August 2026; where one fails, the document title and publisher are given in full so it can be found on the department's own site.

One source is named without a link, deliberately. The National Portal of India (india.gov.in) counts five national parks for Rajasthan, and that count is reported on this page. The portal has no stable single listing page for it, so it is cited by name rather than with a URL that would not resolve to the claim. No link has been invented to fill the gap.

The Ganges River Dolphin survey report covering Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh was read directly as a document; the Wildlife Institute of India page above is its programme home rather than the report file itself.

Protected-area counts and areas are the Rajasthan Forest Department's own, taken from its protected-area listing — 3 notified national parks (510.31 sq km), 26 wildlife sanctuaries (9,145.127 sq km net of overlaps) and 40 conservation reserves (1,871.829 sq km). That page carried a site-update stamp of 21 August 2026 when it was read, which is why these figures are given in preference to the counts printed in preparation material, several of which still say 36 conservation reserves.

A conflict between two Government sources on the number of national parks, resolved rather than chosen between. The National Portal of India lists five national parks for Rajasthan — adding Desert and Sariska to the three above. The Rajasthan Forest Department's own page lists those two under a separate heading, "Under Process", together with Kumbhalgarh National Park (462.05 sq km) and five sanctuary proposals; and it separately lists Desert National Park under "Sanctuary" as Desert National Park Sanctuary. So the department is recording that the final notification under section 35 of the Wild Life (Protection) Act has not been completed for either, while the National Portal counts them as declared. Both figures are reproduced on this page with the reason for the difference, because either could be keyed.

The recorded forest area of about 9.5% is the Forest Department's own statement.

Forest cover figures are read directly from the India State of Forest Report 2023, Volume 2, section 10.22 (Rajasthan) — Table 10.22.2 for the class-wise totals, the Table 10.22.3 grand total for the change against 2021, and Table 10.22.5 for the split inside and outside the recorded forest area. The 2019 and 2021 figures are from the corresponding earlier reports.

The land-use "Forests" figure of 8.10% is from Land Use Statistics, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare, 2021-22, as reproduced in ISFR 2023 Table 10.22.1.

Also read from ISFR 2023, Volume 2, section 10.22: the Champion & Seth forest-type areas (Table 10.22.10), the district-wise forest-fire detections for 2022-23 and 2023-24 and their totals (Table 10.22.11), the fire-proneness classes (Table 10.22.12), the top species by number and volume inside recorded forest and in rural and urban areas (Tables 10.22.13 to 10.22.15), the major NTFP species (Table 10.22.16), and the altitude-wise forest cover (Table 10.22.8). The national totals — forest cover 7,15,342.61 sq km (21.76%), tree cover 1,12,014.34 sq km, and forest and tree cover 8,27,356.95 sq km (25.17%) — are from Volume 1.

A note on which districts ISFR uses. ISFR 2023 reports Rajasthan as 33 districts — the pre-2023 framework — not the current 41. Its district table therefore cannot be mapped one-to-one onto the present administrative map, and district-wise forest figures should be quoted with that caveat.

The tiger reserves, their all-India serial numbers, both notification years and their core, buffer and total areas are the National Tiger Conservation Authority's own listing, which gives 58 tiger reserves in India covering 84,487.83 sq km. That list carries two distinct year columns — PA Notification Year and TR Notification Year — and both are reproduced here, because a question can be built on either and they differ by more than thirty years for Ranthambhore and Sariska.

The constitution of Dholpur–Karauli is taken from the state's own gazette notification declaring the Critical Tiger Habitat under section 38V of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972: CTH of 59,964.060 ha, comprising the whole of Dholpur Wildlife Sanctuary (20,426.11 ha, notified 28 September 2023) and 11,310.00 ha of the National Chambal Gharial Sanctuary (4,540 ha in Dholpur, 6,770 ha in Karauli), running from Gusai Ghat at the Ranthambhore boundary.

A source checked and not used. The NITI Aayog ICED dashboard page on national parks was consulted; it renders its figures through JavaScript and served no data to read, so nothing on this page rests on it. The Rajasthan Forest Department and the NTCA were used instead, both being primary for their own subject matter. An inconsistency inside the state's own website is recorded: the department's Tiger Conservation Plan page still lists four reserves and has not been updated. Five is correct.

A widely circulated claim is refuted rather than repeated. Kumbhalgarh is often named as Rajasthan's sixth tiger reserve. Rajasthan's Chief Wildlife Warden briefed the NTCA that Kumbhalgarh is not an ideal tiger habitat and that the prey base there needs to be expanded, and no notification exists. This page therefore states that Rajasthan has five tiger reserves and that Kumbhalgarh is not among them.

Correction, 23 August 2026 — the Ramsar count and Keoladeo's date

An earlier version of this page, published earlier the same day, stated that Rajasthan had TWO Ramsar sites and that BOTH were designated in 1990. Both halves were wrong.

Rajasthan has five. The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change's list of Ramsar Sites of India as on 21 April 2026 records the state as "Rajasthan (5)": Keoladeo Ghana National Park (1 October 1981, 2,873 ha), Sambhar Lake (23 March 1990, 24,000 ha), Menar Wetland Complex (19 February 2025, 463.413 ha), Khichan wetland (19 February 2025, 54.187 ha) and Siliserh Lake (7 July 2025, 315.97 ha). The five are also listed on the State Wetland Authority, Rajasthan's own pages.

And Keoladeo's designation is 1 October 1981, not 1990 — nearly nine years before Sambhar's.

How the error arose is worth stating, because it is instructive. Three of the five were designated in 2025, so almost every secondary source still prints two, and the older pairing of Keoladeo with Sambhar under a single year is widespread. The page followed that material instead of the Ministry's list. A count that had been stable for thirty-five years changed twice within twelve months, and it was not re-checked against a primary source before publication.

Every consequence of the error has been corrected, including the argument built on it: this page previously observed that India's Ramsar network grew from 26 sites to 98 while Rajasthan's two stayed unchanged. That comparison was the wrong way round — Rajasthan's list trebled in 2025 — and it has been replaced.

Wetland figures are from the National Wetland Atlas: Rajasthan, prepared by the Space Applications Centre (ISRO), Ahmedabad for the Ministry of Environment and Forests under the National Wetland Inventory and Assessment project, reference SAC/EPSA/AFEG/NWIA/ATLAS/31/2010, first published August 2010, and read directly. Mapping is at 1:50,000. Taken from its Table 4: the total of 782,314 ha and 2.29% of the state, the 12,625 mapped and 34,123 small wetlands, the category areas, shares and counts, and the post-monsoon and pre-monsoon open-water spreads.

An older assessment is shown only as superseded. The figures still widely quoted — 1,054 wetlands of 56.25 ha and above covering 3,449.64 sq km, or 1.01% of the state (SRSAC & SAC, 1998) — count only large wetlands and are less than half the atlas area. This page gives 2.29%.

The Chambal material is from the Ganges River Dolphin survey report covering Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh: the National Chambal Sanctuary's 1978 declaration, 5,400 sq km and three-state management; the survey stretch Nagar to Pinahat, 96 km, 10–12 January 2022; Rajasthan's least count of 76 and population estimate of 95 (87–105); the statement that the Chambal holds 80–90% of the recorded global gharial population with 212 individuals recorded over 242 km; and the accompanying species. The report's own caveat that its survey method suits dolphins rather than crocodilians, and therefore yields a relative encounter rate rather than a gharial population estimate, is reproduced because the 212 figure otherwise circulates without it. India's national total of 6,327 river dolphins is from the PIB release on NR-7.

Current developments are from Press Information Bureau releases of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, each read in full: the National Workshop on Tiger Re-introduction at Alwar, 28 June 2026 (Sariska's 56 tigers, the eighteen-year record, the Satkosia comparison and the three publications released); Rajasthan's first Namo Biodiversity Park at Pratap Bandh, Alwar, 5 October 2025; India's Wildlife Conservation Milestones, 3 March 2025 (Project Dolphin hotspots including Rajasthan, and the December 2022 amendment to the Wild Life (Protection) Act); and India Submits Seventh National Report to the Convention on Biological Diversity, 16 March 2026, for the NR-7 figures.

The World Heritage dates are UNESCO's own — Keoladeo National Park inscribed 1985 and the Hill Forts of Rajasthan, a serial property of six forts including Ranthambhore, inscribed 2013.

Establishment years for the national parks are deliberately not given. Sources otherwise agreeing on the five parks disagree on two of the dates — the National Portal gives Keoladeo 1981 and Desert National Park 1992; widely used preparation material gives Keoladeo 1982 and Desert 1981 — and no primary notification was located for either. A date this unstable is not published here.

A note on two protected-area counts that differ by one. The March 2025 release gives 573 wildlife sanctuaries and NR-7 gives 574; 106 national parks in both. The difference is a year of additions, not an error, and both are reproduced with their dates.

Questions and answer keys are from the official RPSC Prelims papers, each cited by year and question number.

Added on 29 August 2026

1. The three official versions of the recorded forest area, and the reserved, protected and unclassified split. From the Rajasthan Forest Department's Annual Administrative Report 2025-26 (33,020.32 sq km, 9.65%, with the classes attributed to the Rajasthan Forest Act, 1953, and the statement that 29,498.49 sq km has been entered in revenue records); the department's district-wise forest area according to legal status as on 31.03.2023 (32,825.43 sq km, 9.59%, from which the district maxima and the six districts with no reserved forest were derived by sorting); and ISFR 2023, Volume 1 (32,869 sq km, 9.60%). The three are printed together because they differ and each is its publisher's own.

2. Rajasthan's tree cover and forest-and-tree cover. From Forest Survey of India, India State of Forest Report 2023, Volume 1: tree cover 10,841.12 sq km, the second-largest in India after Maharashtra; forest and tree cover 27,389.33 sq km, 8.00%; increase in forest and tree cover 394.46 sq km, the fourth-largest among states; increase in tree cover 478.26 sq km, the second-largest; decrease in forest cover outside the recorded forest area 110.65 sq km, the second-largest. The Annual Administrative Report 2025-26 repeats the same three Rajasthan figures.

3. District-wise forest cover. From ISFR 2023, Volume 2, Table 10.22.3, sorted in full; the 33 district totals sum to 16,548.21 sq km, which is the check that the extraction is complete. Twenty-two districts record very dense forest of 0.00 sq km, which is why the 2021 question on the district with minimum very dense forest no longer has a unique answer.

4. The twenty-six sanctuaries and the forty conservation reserves, with districts and areas, from Rajasthan Forest Department, Details of Protected Area, read on 28 August 2026 with a site-update stamp of 27 August 2026, and cross-checked against the department's Protected Area Network map, 2026, which names the same forty reserves and the same twenty-nine parks and sanctuaries. The four superlatives, largest Baleshwar, smallest Beed Muhana B, most in one district Baran with seven, and Bisalpur first in serial order, were derived by sorting the department's own list and not taken from any compilation.

5. The stale district names in the department's own listing. Five districts named on that page, Kekri, Neem Ka Thana, Sanchor, Shahpura and Jaipur Rural, were abolished in the December 2024 reorganisation and are now tehsils. This was established against the Board of Revenue's SDO-wise Tehsil list, updated 22 January 2026, which enumerates the 41 districts and their tehsils and places Todaraisingh, where the Bisalpur reservoir lies, in Tonk. The department's district column is reproduced as it stands, with the current reading given beside it; neither is silently corrected.

6. Eco-sensitive zones. The Kumbhalgarh eco-sensitive zone notification, S.O. 238(E) of 16 January 2026 was read as the gazette text: 0 to 1 km extent, 243 sq km, 94 villages, zero on the northern boundary because it is shared with Ravli Todgarh, a zonal master plan due within two years, and the draft notification S.O. 2575(E) of 12 June 2025 that preceded it. The full list of nineteen final notifications with their S.O. numbers is the department's Notified ESZ of Rajasthan page; the requirement of twenty-four, and the position immediately before Kumbhalgarh, are from the Annual Administrative Report 2025-26.

7. Keoladeo's dates. From PIB, Ministry of Environment and Forests, 11 February 2010: bird sanctuary 13 March 1956, national park 10 March 1982, Ramsar October 1981, World Heritage 1985, area 2,873 ha, marshes artificially created in 1850, water through the Ajan Bund from the Gambhir, and 375 bird species of which 264 resident and 111 migratory. This resolves the 1981-against-1982 dispute recorded elsewhere on this page for Keoladeo alone: the two years are the Ramsar designation and the national park notification. No establishment year is asserted for any other park.

8. The Rajasthan Forest Policy 2023. Read in full from the department's Forest Policy page: the vision of 20% vegetation cover within twenty years with special focus on cover outside forests, the 2010 policy's identical 20% aim at paragraph 1.2, the 7.42% forest-and-tree-cover baseline, the 2.19% GSDP share, and the commitment on orans at paragraph 6.5.11. The document is a scanned publication and carries no release date, so only the year is given.

9. Orans and section 36C. The state's notification of 1 February 2024 declaring orans and ecological areas as deemed forest, published district by district for 32 districts, is the Forest Department's own. The Supreme Court's directions of 18 December 2024 are taken from Down To Earth, 19 December 2024, which reports the mapping direction, the five-hectare and 200-trees-per-hectare deemed-forest test, the section 36C community-reserve direction, the Forest Rights Act section 5 direction, and the statement that the state list covered about 5,000 orans against an estimated 25,000. The order itself was not obtained, and the directions are attributed to that report rather than quoted as the Court's text.

10. Plantation and project figures. From the Annual Administrative Report 2025-26: Mission Hariyalo Rajasthan 11.73 crore saplings to 31 December 2025, with 5.84 crore raised and 5.42 crore distributed in 2025-26; Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam-2 8.22 crore entries on the Meri LiFE portal and 7.63 lakh during Seva Parv; the Green Aravali Development Project at ₹250 crore across 19 named districts and 28,500 ha over three years; and the AFD-financed RFBDP at ₹1,693.94 crore across 13 districts for 2023-24 to 2030-31, whose 70:30 split of ₹1,185.28 crore and ₹508.63 crore reconciles to that total. These are departmental progress figures, not audited results. The central Aravalli Green Wall Project is from PIB, 25 March 2023.

11. The biological parks and safaris, from section 6.3.9 of the Annual Administrative Report 2025-26 and the department's Zoo, Biological Park, Rescue Centre and Bird Park page. Sajjangarh opened first, in April 2015. Only months are given, because the report was read as a scan and single digits in its dates are not reliable.

12. Project Godawan, from section 6.3.3 of the same report, for the tripartite agreement, the Sam breeding centre, the 68 chicks and the Lesser Florican centre at Arwar in Ajmer, with the captive total of 70 in March 2026 from Prasar Bharati News Services, 13 March 2026.

13. The Amrita Devi Smriti Puraskar categories and amounts, from the department's own notification for the 2025 award, digitally signed 3 July 2026.

14. The notified wetlands. 76 wetlands across 23 districts, counted by sorting the State Wetland Authority, Rajasthan's Final Wetland Notification listing, which links a gazette notification against each entry and runs to serial number 76. Baran has the most, thirteen.

15. The IUCN dates, from IUCN's own history page: founded 5 October 1948 at Fontainebleau, and the Red Data Book first published in 1964.

Claims refuted rather than repeated

"Rajasthan's forest cover is 9.60% according to ISFR." It is not. 9.60% is ISFR 2023's figure for Rajasthan's recorded forest area, printed in Volume 1's table of legal categories. ISFR's forest cover for Rajasthan is 16,548.21 sq km, 4.84%. The two are in the same report and measure different things, and the conflation is the exact error section 1 of this page exists to prevent.

"The December 2025 move of a tigress from Pench to Ramgarh Vishdhari was India's first inter-state tiger translocation." It was not. Tigers were moved from Madhya Pradesh to Satkosia in Odisha in 2018, which is the relocation the Union Environment Minister cited at Alwar in June 2026 as the one that failed. At most the 2025 operation was the first inter-state translocation by air.

"Rajasthan has 44 notified wetlands across 19 districts, with 12 in Baran." The State Wetland Authority's own current listing gives 76 across 23 districts, with 13 in Baran. The older figures are a superseded snapshot, and Baran being highest is the only part that survives.

"Rajasthan has 38 forest circles." The department's own report gives 38 territorial divisions and 16 wildlife divisions. The count is right and the unit is wrong.

"State CAMPA was constituted on 30 September 2018." The Rajasthan Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority was constituted by central notification dated 14 September 2018 under section 10(5) of the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act, 2016, as the department's own Annual Administrative Report 2025-26 states.

Replacement for the closing paragraph of this section. Not covered on this page and therefore not asserted: the closed-area list, the district mascot list, the two earlier phases of the Rajasthan Forestry and Biodiversity Project, and the traditional rainfall-band forest classification. Each of these is set out, with the reason it is not carried, in the Aggregator Watch above.

Not covered on this page and therefore not asserted: the district-wise forest-cover table, the full 26-sanctuary and 40-conservation-reserve lists, forest types by Champion and Seth classification, and the biosphere-reserve position. These belong with later revisions of this chapter.