Hingolgadh turns ‘nature classroom’ for visitors

Rajkot: With lush green oxyrich cover provided by as many as 314 types of tree spices, Hingolgadh has emerged as a jungle that creates an opportunity for environmental education for the generations to come.
Barely 78 km from Rajkot, there have been 3,950 environmental educational camps organized since 1982 every year, in which 2,20,293 students of different schools and colleges have been sensitized to the importance of environment conservation. Spread over an area of 654 sq km, Hingolgadh was declared a sanctuary in 1980. It is being managed by the Gujarat Ecological Education and Research (GEER) Foundation in Gandhinagar as the Hingolgadh Nature Education Sanctuary. It is home to animals like chinkara, bluebull, wolf, jackal, foxes, Indian porcupine, Indian hare, hyena and flying foxes. Sometimes, leopards are also spotted in the jungle of Hingolgadh.
Birds like Indian pitta, vibrant red-vented bulbul, twittering green bee-eater, spotted dove, Indian paradise flycatcher and wood pecker have made this sanctuary their abode.
That apart, there are 33 types of reptiles including four varieties of poisionous Indian snakes — spectacled cobra, russell's viper, saw-scaled viper and common krait — are found in Hingolgadh. In order to conserve rain water, the forest department has taken concrete steps.
“We have created check dams and bunds over different water resources like rivers, streams and ponds in order to prevent rain water from going to waste and created 150 new water resources,” says Arif Theba, who has been serving at Hingolgadh as the range forest officer for the past three years.