Chhattisgarh’s forest department is preparing to release 50 blackbucks into Gomarda Wildlife Sanctuary, a protected area that has had none of the antelope for more than five decades.
The standing committee of the State Wildlife Board approved the proposal at a meeting in Nava Raipur chaired by Forest Minister Kedar Kashyap, according to a Hindi-language report published on 13 October. The release date has not been announced. Dainik Jagran reported that preparations are under way. The reports reviewed do not say where the 50 animals will come from.
Gomarda lies in Sarangarh-Bilaigarh district. The plan copies what the department did at Barnawapara Wildlife Sanctuary, about 245 square kilometres in Mahasamund district.
Barnawapara is the template. In 2018, 77 blackbucks were moved there: 27 from Kanan Pendari Zoological Garden in Bilaspur and 50 from the National Zoological Park in New Delhi. They were first kept in a four-hectare enclosure to settle in under supervision. Over two years, officials gradually opened the gates so the animals could move onto nearby grassland.
The numbers have grown since. A divisional forest officer said the Barnawapara population now stands at more than 200. The state describes it as India’s first successful blackbuck rewilding. Counts have varied across reports. Some earlier accounts gave about 190, with roughly 130 in the open and around 80 still in enclosures.
The Gomarda numbers have also shifted. An official said earlier this year that about 40 blackbucks would be released there this monsoon. A report from about a month ago spoke of 25 animals moving from Barnawapara to Gomarda. The monsoon has passed without a release, and the committee’s figure is now 50.
Blackbucks were pushed out of Chhattisgarh by habitat degradation, poaching and changes in land use. The species is listed under Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, India’s highest level of legal protection. It is also treated as an indicator of grassland health.
The Gomarda proposal is the first test of whether Barnawapara’s results can be repeated at a second site. The department has yet to announce a release date or the source of the animals.
