Many individuals and organizations have contributed their time and effort in the preparation of this report.

I would like to place on special record my gratitude to Shri V.B. Sharma, Sr. Manager - Pipeline Projects, BPCL for initially providing us the opportunity to undertake this assignment and subsequently, for facilitating our task. We thank him for reposing his trust in our professional abilities and for his patience because of this much delayed output.

We are extremely grateful to Shri Ajay Ratan, Shri A.N. Chaturvedi, Shri C. Narayanan, Shri I.N. Zaidi and Shri Ajit Kumar who as Project Leaders handling technical operations in different spreads of the MMPL Extension Project of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited made our task in field both easy and enjoyable. They and their respective team mates in each spread have been tremendous source of technical information and guidance on the profile of the project and the finer details of the pipeline route necessary for planning our studies. We also value their assistance in field work and sincerely thank them for excellent logistic arrangements and hospitality at all the camping sites. This kept us going on the 740 km stretch of pipeline route as per our work schedule.

We are also grateful to Shri Umesh Gautam, Manager Engineering and Shri Sudeep Taneja, Sr. Engineer who helped us answer our several numerous queries and request for spatial data from time to time.

We are grateful to Shri K.C.A. Arun Prasad, Director, Keoladeo National Park, and Shri Raghurvir Singh Sekhawat, Divisional Forest Officer, Jhalawar Forest Division, Rajasthan Forest Department for providing us with much needed information and insight needed for conducting an ecological assessment of the area under the Manglya–Bijwasan pipeline corridor.

At the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), we sincerely acknowledge Shri P.R Sinha, Director, and WII for providing his valuable guidance and support through out the course of the study.

The painstaking efforts of Shri. Narinder Bist and Shri. Praveen K. Tomar of the EIA Cell of WII in Desk Top Printing of this report are thankfully acknowledged.

Project Team

Conclusions and Recommendations