The world’s largest jungle safari park will be developed in the Haryana Aravalli range, the state government has announced. The scheme, covering 10 thousand acres, aims to make it the largest project globally. The largest curated safari park so far is located in Sharjah, which is spread over about 2 thousand acres.
Aravalli mountain range
- The Aravalli mountain range starts from Champaner in Gujarat in the southwest and extends diagonally across Rajasthan for about 690 km to near Delhi in the northeast.
- A wildlife safari park is a tourist attraction where visitors can see animals roaming freely, either by driving their own cars or sitting in the vehicles provided. It is like a zoo, but the animals have more space to move around.
- Of the total 3,858 hectares proposed in the tender, 2,574 will be spread across 11 villages in Gurugram and the remaining 1,284 across seven villages in Nuh.
- The park will have animal cages, guest houses, hotels, restaurants, auditoriums, a veterinary hospital, children’s park, botanical gardens, aquariums, cable cars, a tunnel passage with exhibitions, an open-air theatre and eateries.
- It will ensure that the groundwater of the area is not depleted as officials estimate that 10 cusecs of water will be required for the first phase of development.
- The project, which was announced in April 2022 by then chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar, aims to develop a 10,000-acre zoo safari based on the Sharjah park in the UAE.
- The project will be developed only in areas where the forest density is less than 40%.
- Until 2023, a zoo safari was not considered a forest activity, but the Central Government amended the Forest (Protection) Act to bring it within the legal ambit and allow zoos to be built in forest areas.