Abohar Wildlife Sanctuary in Fazilka district covers 46,513 acres across thirteen Bishnoi villages: Raipura, Dotaranwali, Rajwali, Sardarpura, Khairpura, Sukhchain, Seetoguno, Maharana, Himmatpura, Rampura, Narainpura, Bishanpura and Bazidpur Bhoma.
It was notified in 1975 and declared under the Wildlife Protection Act in 2000. More than 30,000 Bishnois patrol it day and night, catch poachers unarmed, give first aid to injured animals, and perform last rites for dead blackbuck.
Blackbuck censuses counted about 3,500 in 2011 and 3,273 in 2017. Sant Kumar won the Indira Gandhi Environment Award in 1992. Living sources include Ashok Bishnoi, RD Bishnoi, ranger Anita Rani, and guard Rajendra Bishnoi, 26 years in the job.
There is no forest. The sanctuary is farmland, and it works because thirteen villages have agreed that it should.
The Bishnoi tradition prohibits the killing of animals and the felling of green trees, and the blackbuck and the chinkara in these villages survive because of that prohibition rather than because of the notification. The notification followed the practice by a very long time.
Because the land is private farmland, the sanctuary status creates a conflict that has run since it was declared. Crop damage by blackbuck is real, compensation is slow, and landowners inside a notified sanctuary face restrictions on what they may do with their own fields.
Road kills on the Abohar to Fazilka road and dog packs are the causes of death the villagers report most often. Neither is addressed by the sanctuary's management, which has almost no staff and no enclosed land to manage.