Bihar Quiz: Valmiki Tiger Reserve and Wildlife Sanctuaries

Valmiki in West Champaran district is the only national park of Bihar and also its only tiger reserve: the sanctuary was notified in 1978, the national park declared in 1989 and the tiger reserve in 1990.

The reserve occupies the north-western corner of Bihar in West Champaran, where the Himalayan foothills of the Someshwar and Dun ranges meet the Gandak, and its northern boundary is the international border with Nepal.

The Kaimur wildlife sanctuary runs along the Kaimur plateau in Kaimur and Rohtas districts in the south-west of the state and is the largest sanctuary of Bihar, a dry deciduous forest of sal, khair and bamboo with gorges, waterfalls and rock paintings in its hills.

The sanctuary was notified in 1991 on about fifty kilometres of the Ganga between Sultanganj and Kahalgaon in Bhagalpur district, and it takes its name from the ancient university of Vikramshila nearby.

The Bhimbandh sanctuary lies in the Kharagpur hills of Munger district and is famous for the hot springs that bubble out of its forest, the best known of them giving the place its name; pilgrims and visitors come for the water, which is believed to cure skin ailments.

It is a great oxbow lake left behind by a shifting channel of the Burhi Gandak, one of the largest freshwater wetlands of the Ganga plain, and it fills every winter with migratory ducks, geese and waders while also supporting fishing and singhara cultivation by the villages around it.

Both are small irrigation reservoirs in the hills of Jamui district in southern Bihar, built across seasonal streams, and over the years their shallow margins have become a winter home for thousands of waterbirds, including bar-headed geese; they were recognised as Ramsar sites in 2024 and were the state's second…

The house sparrow is the state bird, the peepal the state tree and the marigold the state flower, and exams often set all four in one question.

The Chitwan national park of Nepal lies immediately across the border from Valmiki, so the two together form one continuous block of Terai forest and grassland; tigers, leopards and the occasional one-horned rhinoceros move between them, and the two countries manage the landscape as a shared corridor.

The three dates of this one area are the whole question: the wildlife sanctuary was notified in 1978, the national park came in 1989 and the tiger reserve in 1990, so Option A and Option B are both true statements about Valmiki but answers to different questions, which is exactly…