Three dated public documents bear on waste near the western side of Rajaji Tiger Reserve: an observation recorded in a national authority's annual report, a Wildlife Institute of India dissertation that mapped garbage sites around the western part of the reserve, and a river action plan for the Suswa. Read carefully, they answer a narrower question than whether a measured amount of Dehradun waste enters the park. This article places them side by side and keeps each document's scope visible. Every figure carries its source and period. It publishes no tonnage, no park-wide plastic load, and no claim that any animal has eaten, become entangled in or died from any of this waste, because none of the three documents says so.
Sources used, all checked on 23 October 2026: the National Tiger Conservation Authority, Annual Report 2022-23; Nagarale, S., B. Habib, S. Shrotriya & B. Pandav (2024), Subsidized Mammals: Understanding the mammalian interactions with garbage sites around Western-Rajaji Tiger Reserve, Uttarakhand, dissertation, Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, repository record; and the National Mission for Clean Ganga, Suswa River Action Plan, July 2019.
The Dehradun drainage observation, exactly as it is recorded
The Annual Report 2022-23 contains a section recording points made during a meeting, and one entry is headed, in the report's own words, Dr. S. P. Yadav, ADG (PT) & MS (NTCA), (Visit to Rajaji Tiger Reserve, Uttarakhand). The first observation in that list states that many drainage points from the city of Dehradun open into the reserves which along with waste bring in loads of plastic garbage into the Park. The rest of the same short list records an acute shortage of field staff with vacancies lying vacant, a Tiger Conservation Plan that had not yet been submitted for approval, the creation of a Tiger Conservation Fund that was yet to be done, a need to augment the tiger population in the western zone, and a suggestion that the park explore corporate social responsibility funding from the industrial estate around it. Read as a whole, the entry reads as a note of what one visiting official observed and raised, not as a monitoring result.
What the entry does not contain matters as much as what it does. There is no date for the visit, no sampling points, no method, no unit of measure, no tonnage, no breakdown of which drains fall inside, at or outside the boundary, and no comparison with any earlier period. This article therefore does not convert the sentence into a quantity, does not present it as evidence that waste has increased or decreased, and does not treat it as a survey. It is one recorded observation, published in an annual report, about the western part of the reserve that faces the city.
One precision point about the same report. Elsewhere its decision records carry a line that tiger reserves should be 100% free of single use plastic, and the approvals of three tiger conservation plans, for Periyar, Parambikulam and Indravati, each add a prescription to make the tiger reserve a zero plastic region. Those prescriptions attach to other reserves. Quoting them as a Rajaji commitment would be a mistake, and this article does not.
Twenty-one garbage sites, ten of them camera-trapped
The second source is a dissertation deposited in the Wildlife Institute of India digital repository, issued in 2024 by researchers at the institute and titled Subsidized Mammals: Understanding the mammalian interactions with garbage sites around Western-Rajaji Tiger Reserve, Uttarakhand. Its study design is worth reading in full, because the design defines what the numbers can support.
To find sites, a preliminary survey was carried out in December 2023 and January 2024. For systematic mapping, a buffer of 4 km around the western part of the reserve was marked and grids of 4 km2 were layered over it in ArcGIS, giving 72 grids, each surveyed twice, with residents also asked about the presence of garbage sites and of wild mammals at them. The results section opens with the finding that a total of 21 sites were located in the mapping survey, out of which 10 were selected for further camera trapping based on their composition, distance from the protected area, size and camera safety. The dissertation table listing all 21 gives their distance from the protected area, running from 0 m, that is at the boundary, up to 3,074 m, alongside distance from human infrastructure and the broad category of the site, household, religious or roadside.
At the 10 selected sites, 13 infrared camera traps were deployed at about 45 cm above ground, running around the clock. The cameras were active between 12 January 2024 and 19 March 2024 and were retrieved after 31 to 53 nights, giving 437 trap nights of effort. Waste itself was measured separately: one-metre square quadrats, each divided into 25 by 25 centimetre subsamples, with a total of 39 plots laid across the garbage sites, and categories that include food wrappers and disposables, food materials, religious offerings, agricultural discards, dung plates, sanitary waste, construction waste, carcass and poultry waste, pharmaceutical waste, cloth and plastic, and others.
The abstract reports visitation rates rather than any measure of harm, with sambar recorded at the highest rate among the species at garbage sites, followed by Indian crested porcupine and spotted deer, and it records that its own hypothesis, that synanthropic species would visit more often, was rejected by the data. What the study therefore documents is that mammals visit these sites, how often, and what the waste is made of. It does not document ingestion, injury or mortality, and this article will not supply those verbs on its behalf. Its scope is also fixed: one mapping survey season, one camera window in the first months of 2024, and the western part of the reserve only. It is not a park-wide census of waste, and the authors do not present it as one. The numeric results of research conducted inside the reserve are set out in our wildlife research and monitoring article, which also explains how a sampling design should be read before its numbers are quoted.
The Suswa plan is upstream context, not a plan for Rajaji
The third document is the Suswa River Action Plan of July 2019, prepared by the National Mission for Clean Ganga under National Green Tribunal orders dated 20 September 2018, 19 December 2018 and 8 April 2019. It records that, after the river Suswa meets the Rispana and Bindal at Mothrawala, it is joined by several drains including the river Song, that a total of 51 drains including the Song flow towards that catchment, and that on the basis of water quality data for 2016 and 2017 the Central Pollution Control Board identified about 31 km of the Suswa from Mothrawala to Raiwala as a polluted stretch because of a BOD concentration above 30 mg/L. Its programme lists interception, diversion and treatment of the Rispana, the Bindal and other polluting drains, a solid waste processing and disposal facility for Doiwala, monitoring of sewage treatment plants, prohibition on illegal disposal of waste in river beds, groundwater monitoring and recharge, and plantation in the catchment, at an estimated Rs 8,471.76 lakh.
The word Rajaji does not appear anywhere in that plan, as checked on 23 October 2026. This matters for how the document is used. It is a plan for a river stretch identified as polluted under tribunal orders, and it is best read as the upstream urban context against which drainage into and around the western side of the reserve is discussed. It commits nothing inside the reserve, it is not a waste plan for Rajaji, and describing it as one would attribute to it a scope its text does not claim. The two documents do share one place name: the Suswa plan lists the river Song among the drains feeding the catchment, and the wildlife board minutes of 31 July 2024, read in our riverbed mining explainer, list riverbed mining lots on the Song and the Jakhan near the western boundary. Neither document uses that shared name to record plastic moving into the reserve.
What the three documents do not establish
- No tonnage. None of the three contains a mass of plastic, a length of drain cleared, or a rate of input per year. This article publishes no figure of that kind for the reserve.
- No park-wide load. The dissertation covers the western part for one survey season and one camera window. The annual report entry is an observation from a visit. The Suswa plan is about a river stretch outside the reserve. Nothing here scales to the whole reserve.
- No wildlife harm. Visitation rates and waste composition are not evidence of ingestion, entanglement, poisoning or mortality. No such claim is made here, and none should be drawn from this page.
- No current condition. The three documents are dated July 2019, the 2022-23 report year, and 2024. This article checked the public record on 23 October 2026 and asserts nothing about how much waste is present at any location today.
- No plan for the reserve. There is no reserve-wide waste or plastic plan among these sources, and this article does not describe any of them as one.
What this means for a visitor
Very little changes at the gate, and nothing here is a reason to alter a permitted route or ignore instructions from forest staff. What changes is the standard of proof. If a post, a video or a guide tells you that a measured volume of plastic enters Rajaji from Dehradun every year, you can now ask which document and which year, because the sources in general circulation do not carry one. Carry out what you carry in, keep waste inside the vehicle, and do not add to a site that a survey has already counted: our responsible travel guide covers conduct inside the reserve, and our myths and facts page covers the habit of asking for the source behind a claim. For the landscape side, our rivers and waterholes guide covers the streams and seasonal water that these drain and river documents are about, our ranges and map guide places the western ranges against the city, and our community conservation article covers the settlements along the boundary in general terms. When a number or a plan is put to you as fact, how to verify an operator or a claim covers the checking habit itself.
Plastic and waste around western Rajaji questions answered
Does the NTCA Annual Report 2022-23 put a number on the plastic entering Rajaji?
No, and this article does not give one. The report carries an entry recording a Visit to Rajaji Tiger Reserve, Uttarakhand by Dr. S. P. Yadav, ADG (PT) and MS (NTCA), whose first observation states that many drainage points from the city of Dehradun open into the reserves which along with waste bring in loads of plastic garbage into the Park. The entry gives no visit date, no sampling method, no measurement unit, no tonnage and no locations, so it is published here as an observation recorded during a visit rather than as a quantity or a survey result.
How many garbage sites did the Wildlife Institute of India dissertation find around western Rajaji?
Its mapping survey located a total of 21 sites, from which 10 were selected for camera trapping. The preliminary survey ran in December 2023 and January 2024, using a 4 km buffer around the western part of the reserve with 72 grids of 4 km2 each surveyed twice, and residents were also asked about sites. Table 5 of the dissertation lists all 21 sites with their distance from the protected area, ranging from 0 m at the boundary to 3,074 m away. It is one survey season and one camera window, 12 January 2024 to 19 March 2024, covering the western part of the reserve only, and it is not a park-wide census.
Does the Suswa River Action Plan cover Rajaji Tiger Reserve?
No. The National Mission for Clean Ganga action plan for the Suswa, dated July 2019, does not contain the word Rajaji anywhere in the document as checked on 23 October 2026. It is a plan for a polluted river stretch identified by the Central Pollution Control Board using 2016 and 2017 water quality data: about 31 km from Mothrawala to Raiwala, with a BOD concentration above 30 mg/L, prepared under National Green Tribunal orders of 20 September 2018, 19 December 2018 and 8 April 2019. It records 51 drains including the river Song flowing into the catchment and proposes interception, treatment and a solid waste processing and disposal facility for Doiwala. It is upstream urban context for this article, and it is not a waste plan for the reserve.
Do these sources show wildlife eating or being harmed by plastic?
No. None of the three documents used here records ingestion, entanglement, injury or death of an animal from waste. The 2024 dissertation measures how often mammals visit garbage sites, reporting for example the highest visitation rate for sambar in its camera-trap data, and it quantifies what the waste is made of through 39 one-metre square quadrat plots. Visitation and composition are not evidence of harm, and this article does not convert them into one.
Is there a measured park-wide plastic load for the reserve?
None was located in the public sources checked on 23 October 2026, so this article publishes no figure. There is no tonnage in the NTCA visit observation, no tonnage in the dissertation, which covers one season and the western part only, and no tonnage in the Suswa action plan, which concerns a river stretch outside the reserve. The absence of a located figure is a limit on this search, not a statement that plastic is absent or present in any particular amount.