Wildlife Conservation: Crocodiles, snow leopard and lion

The first Vulture Conservation Breeding Centre (the Jatayu Conservation Breeding Centre) was set up in 2004 at Pinjore in Haryana by the Haryana Forest Department and the Bombay Natural History Society, building on a vulture care centre started there in 2001. It led the captive breeding of the three Critically Endangered resident Gyps vultures. Centres followed at Rajabhatkhawa (West Bengal) and Rani (Assam), and five more with the Central Zoo Authority, making eight.

The World Conservation Congress is normally held every four years. Recent Congresses were held in Hawai'i (2016), Marseille (September 2021, postponed from 2020 because of the pandemic) and Abu Dhabi (9-15 October 2025). Each Congress sets IUCN's four-year Programme, so the Abu Dhabi Congress adopted the IUCN Programme 2026-2029 along with a 20-year Strategic Vision.

On 6 October 2025, during Wildlife Week, the Union Environment Minister launched five initiatives at the Forest Research Institute, Dehradun: Project Dolphin (Phase II) for river and marine cetaceans, Project Sloth Bear, Project Gharial, a Centre of Excellence for Human–Wildlife Conflict Management at SACON, and 'Tigers Outside Tiger Reserves'. Action plans for river dolphins and cetaceans, tigers, snow leopards, and the Great Indian Bustard and lesser florican were also released. The Gir meeting of the National Board for Wildlife was a separate event in March 2025, so statement 3 is wrong.

The 16th lion estimation (10–13 May 2025) found that lions dispersing from Gir had naturally established a new satellite population in Barda Wildlife Sanctuary near Porbandar, the first lions there since 1879. Barda had long been proposed as a 'second home' for the Asiatic lion within Gujarat. Girnar and Mitiyala already held satellite populations, while Pania is part of the Gir source population.

Project Nilgiri Tahr was sanctioned by a Tamil Nadu Government Order in December 2022 and formally launched by the Chief Minister on 12 October 2023, with an outlay of about Rs 25 crore. Its aims include synchronised population surveys, radio-telemetry studies, removal of invasive plants from grasslands and reintroduction of the tahr into parts of its historical range. The State observes 7 October, the birth anniversary of E.R.C. Davidar, who pioneered tahr studies, as Nilgiri Tahr Day. All three statements are correct.

Pairs 1, 3 and 4 are correct. The Nilgiri tahr, endemic to the southern Western Ghats, is Endangered, and so is the wild water buffalo, whose largest population is in Kaziranga. The greater one-horned rhinoceros is Vulnerable. The snow leopard is not Endangered: it was moved to Vulnerable in 2017, so pair 2 is wrong.

The cheetah was declared extinct in India in 1952. The Pygmy Hog Conservation Programme began in 1996 with the capture of six hogs from Manas. Project Snow Leopard was launched by the Ministry of Environment and Forests in January 2009. The first range-wide riverine dolphin estimation report was released at Gir on 3 March 2025. The order is 2-1-3-4.

The 16th lion estimation, held from 10 to 13 May 2025, counted 891 Asiatic lions, a rise of about 32 per cent from 674 in 2020. It was conducted by the Gujarat Forest Department using the Direct Beat Verification method, a minimum total count by field teams in 735 sampling units spread over about 35,000 sq km in 11 districts of Saurashtra. It was not a camera-trap capture–recapture exercise by the Wildlife Institute of India, so statement 3 is wrong.

Option (a) is correct per UPSC's key. Option (a) lists only threatened animals: the Great Indian Bustard (Critically Endangered), musk deer and red panda (Endangered), and the Asiatic wild ass, treated as endangered in India; the Indian subspecies, the khur, is in Schedule I (the IUCN now lists the species as a whole as Near Threatened, so the grouping is loose). Each other option includes a common animal: cheetal and blue bull (nilgai) in (b) and (d), rhesus monkey in (c), and Hanuman langur in (d). So (b), (c) and (d) fail.

Notice the bustard's plight: fewer than 150 remain, mainly in Rajasthan; the Supreme Court has ordered undergrounding of power lines in its habitat. Trap: one common animal sinks an option.

Answer as per the official UPSC answer key.

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Items 1, 3 and 4 are correct (b). The black-necked crane breeds in Ladakh and winters in Arunachal's Tawang area and Bhutan (1). Flying squirrels live in the Western Ghats, the Himalaya and the north-east (3). The snow leopard lives in the high Himalaya of Ladakh, Himachal, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Arunachal (4). Item 2 is wrong: the Asiatic cheetah was declared extinct in India in 1952, so it was not naturally found in 2012. So (a), (c) and (d) fail.

Notice the update: African cheetahs were brought to Kuno (MP) from September 2022 under Project Cheetah, and some were moved to Gandhi Sagar in 2025. India's first snow leopard survey (2023) counted about 718. Trap: today's cheetahs are introduced, not native.

Answer as per the official UPSC answer key.

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