Gurgaon: With the population of wild animals in the Aravalis of southern Haryana increasing over the past 10 years, cases of road deaths are also on the rise. But the forest department does not have any plan to build wildlife corridors on the roads that pass through the Aravalis, according to an RTI response.“This is to inform you that there is no proposal in this office for making wildlife corridor in eco-sensitive areas in the Aravalis,” states the RTI response. A copy of the reply is with TOI.Experts said it is mandatory to have wildlife corridors whenever infrastructure projects are planned near a forest or an eco-sensitive zone. Vaishali Rana Chandra, a conservationist who had filed the RTI application, said: “Union environment ministry has made it mandatory to have wildlife corridors or passages wherever infrastructure development is planned through eco-sensitive zones or forests. There are specific guidelines to build wildlife corridors if any linear infrastructure project is planned to cut through forests or eco-sensitive zones. Unfortunately, Haryana does not have any such proposal. This, even after the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) has clearly stated that there are many wild species in the area and a good population of apex predators ( leopards ).”The city has at least three highways — Gurgaon-Faridabad Road, NH-8 and Kundli-Manesar-Palwal Expressway — cutting through the forests and eco-sensitive zones in the Aravalis. Seven leopards, including two cubs, have been killed in accidents on two highways in the last 10 years. While two leopards were killed on the Gurgaon-Faridabad Road, five were killed on NH-8. There have been no reports of roadkills on the newly constructed expressway, but leopard sightings have been recorded near the road.The Gurgaon-Faridabad road meanders through a natural wildlife corridor between Asola Bhatti Sanctuary in Delhi and Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan. On NH-8, there is a wildlife corridor near Manesar. The KMP Expressway cuts through some hills near Sohna that have a considerable wildlife population. “When the Gurgaon-Faridabad Road was widened, the forest department had raised concerns over the presence of wildlife in the area. After a leopard death was reported in 2007-08, we submitted proposals to the senior officials seeking a passage for animals,” said R P Balwan, former conservator of forests, Gurgaon circle.“Corridor is a technical term. We don’t have any proposal to build a wildlife corridor, as these are very wide and it is not possible to build them in Haryana. However, some proposals had been submitted to build green passages. But they never saw the light of day,” said a senior forest official.In 2017, a WII study had revealed that there are 10 carnivore species in the Aravalis of south Haryana. The number of leopards was recorded at 31.

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