Inside a forest nursery—home to Alwar's divisional forest office—a unit of the Rajasthan Armed Constabulary (RAC) is stationed. It was the RAC that assisted former divisional forest officer Apoorva Krishna Srivastava in stopping the mining mafia in its tracks and carrying out rewilding in 2021 in Kahrani, a village near the district’s Bhiwadi industrial hub, and an integral part of the Aravallis.
One of the oldest mountain ranges in the world, the Aravallis are rich in biodiversity and stretch across northwestern India, spanning the National Capital Region (NCR) as well as parts of Haryana, Rajasthan, and Gujarat.
Historically recognised across up to 37 districts, the range has, over the years, been severely degraded by illegal stone crushers who have denuded large stretches and stripped them of native vegetation.
Speaking to The Quint, Satish Naruka, a ranger in the Kishangarh Bas area in Alwar, says, “At present, maintenance work is on as part of the regeneration project under which native tree species were planted."
In Naruka's range, almost 100 hectares have been covered with 20,000 saplings after illegal mining was stopped.