First Tigress Released in Buxa Tiger Reserve of West Bengal

The correct answer is Valmiki Tiger Reserve, Bihar. The tigress, identified as T138, was moved from Valmiki in Bihar to Buxa in West Bengal after ecological, veterinary and management parameters had been assessed and the laid-down protocols followed, and the Environment Minister thanked the Bihar Chief Minister for the state's support in the translocation. Option A, Manas Tiger Reserve in Assam, is a plausible distractor because a tiger photographed at Buxa by camera traps was matched with a Manas animal, but that was evidence of natural movement across the landscape and not the source of this release. Option C, the Sundarbans, lies in the same state as Buxa and is not mentioned as the source at all. Option D, Kanha, is a well-known reserve of Madhya Pradesh that has no part in this programme. The pairing to remember is Valmiki in Bihar as the source and Buxa in West Bengal as the destination.

The correct answer is 1983. Buxa, long regarded as an important tiger landscape of North Bengal, was given the status of a Tiger Reserve in that year, and it forms part of a larger ecological unit connected to forests and protected areas in Bhutan and Assam. Option A is a tempting choice because it is the year associated with the launch of India's national tiger programme, but Buxa was not among the reserves notified at that point. Option C does not correspond to any milestone named for the reserve. Option D, 2018, is the year from which the Tiger Augmentation and Recovery Project has been carried out jointly by the Government of West Bengal with the National Tiger Conservation Authority and the Wildlife Institute of India, so it marks the start of the recovery effort rather than the notification of the reserve. Keeping these two years apart is the key to this item.

The correct answer is about 380 hectares, restored or converted over the past eight years as part of the groundwork for tiger recovery at Buxa. Alongside this, more than 800 chital were released to supplement the prey base, and scientific monitoring has indicated a rising trend in prey abundance, which is why the reserve was judged ready for the first release. Options A and B are close but lower figures of the kind examiners use to test whether a candidate has read the number carefully rather than approximately. Option D confuses two separate figures in the same story, since 800 is the count of chital released into the reserve and not an area of grassland. For revision, attach hectares to the grassland figure and head count to the chital figure, and remember that both belong to the Tiger Augmentation and Recovery Project.

The correct answer is India's Wildlife Week. The release of the tigress in Buxa Tiger Reserve was described as a fitting beginning to Wildlife Week in the country, and it coincided with the start of the phased Tiger Reintroduction Programme for the reserve. Option B, National Forest Martyrs Day, honours those who died protecting forests and wildlife and is a separate observance that has no connection with this release. Option C, World Nature Conservation Day, is an international observance and not the occasion named here. Option D is not an observance at all; a wildlife census is an exercise in counting animals rather than a week marked in the calendar, and the monitoring described for this tigress uses telemetry, camera trapping and field observation to follow one animal. Pair the release with Wildlife Week and with the reserve's first reintroduction phase.