Silchar, June 21: The Assam forest directorate has decided to develop a new wildlife sanctuary spread over an area of 45,000 hectares in the Barali reserve forest in Cachar district.

An official notification is in this regard is expected to be issued in a month’s time.

M.M. Sharma, the conservator of forests in the south Assam zone, said here that such a huge sprawl of the wooded stretch has been demarcated with a view to developing a modern wildlife sanctuary for rare species of local fauna.

He said the scheme for developing this rich reserve forest into a wildlife sanctuary was first mooted in 1995.

This will be the seventeenth wildlife sanctuary in Assam which is also endowed with a string of five national parks including Kaziranga and Manas forests.