Environment & Ecology Mixed Quiz: Set 29

The correct answer is C, one third. The National Forest Policy of 1952 laid down that about thirty-three per cent of the country's geographical area should carry forest or tree cover, and it broke that national figure into about sixty per cent for the hill and mountain regions, where slopes must be held against erosion and landslides, and about twenty per cent for the plains. The National Forest Policy of 1988 retained the same target while shifting the purpose of forest management from revenue to ecological balance. Option A, one fifth, is the figure prescribed for the plains alone, which is why it is offered here. Option B, one fourth, and option D, one half, do not appear in either policy. The point to remember is that this is a policy goal and not an achievement, and that the Forest Survey of India measures how far the country actually stands from it in the India State of Forest Report published every two years.

The correct answer is B, Earthworm. The earthworm is called the farmer's friend because its work keeps soil fit for crops. As it burrows it loosens the soil and lets air and water reach the roots, and the castings it leaves behind are rich in nitrogen, phosphorus and potash, so the topsoil is steadily renewed. Charles Darwin called earthworms nature's ploughmen for this reason. Farmers use the same habit in vermicomposting, where species such as Eisenia fetida turn cattle dung and crop waste into fine manure within a few weeks. A is wrong because the cockroach is a household pest that spoils food and carries germs. C is wrong because the honey bee is useful as a pollinator and for honey, but the name friend of the farmer is not given to it. D is wrong because the housefly spreads diseases such as typhoid and cholera. Exam tip: earthworm, the farmer's friend and nature's plough, used in vermicompost.

The correct answer is B, Sariska. The Alwar district reserve in Rajasthan was found in 2004 and 2005 to have no tigers left, the result of poaching and weak protection. The Tiger Task Force appointed in 2005 examined the failure, and its report led to the statutory National Tiger Conservation Authority in 2006 and to the first relocation of tigers, from Ranthambore to Sariska from 2008. Option A is wrong, though it is the closest distractor: Panna in Madhya Pradesh lost its tigers a few years later and was repopulated in the same way, so the two are often interchanged. Option C is wrong because Palamau, one of the original nine reserves, declined but was not the trigger for the Task Force. Option D is wrong because Dampa in Mizoram was not involved in this episode.

The correct answer is C, 1980. The Forest (Conservation) Act was passed in 1980 to stop the steady loss of forest land to mining, roads, dams and townships. Its central provision is that no State Government or other authority may dereserve a reserved forest or allow forest land to be used for a non-forest purpose without the prior approval of the Central Government, and a 1988 amendment tightened it further by covering clearing of naturally grown trees for reafforestation. Option A, 1972, is the year of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, which deals with animals, hunting and protected areas. Option B, 1976, is the year the Forty-second Amendment inserted Articles 48A and 51A(g) into the Constitution and moved forests and wildlife to the Concurrent List. Option D, 1984, is the year of the Bhopal gas tragedy, which led to the Environment (Protection) Act of 1986. Keep the chain in order: 1972 wildlife, 1976 constitutional duty, 1980 forest conservation, 1986 environment protection.

The correct answer is A, West Bengal. In the early 1970s, in the Arabari range of the Midnapore district of West Bengal, foresters stopped treating villagers as encroachers and instead gave them a share in the protection and in the produce of a degraded sal forest; the forest recovered remarkably, and the experiment became the model for Joint Forest Management, adopted as national policy through a Government of India circular in 1990. Option B, Odisha, has a strong tradition of self-initiated community forest protection and thousands of village committees, but Arabari is not in Odisha. Option C, Gujarat, and option D, Maharashtra, both run large Joint Forest Management programmes without being the origin of the idea. Under Joint Forest Management the village committee shares the usufruct, that is grasses, fuelwood, non-timber produce and a share of the final harvest, which is the detail most often asked.

The correct answer is B, 1973. Project Tiger began on 1 April 1973 as a centrally sponsored scheme with nine reserves, after the tiger replaced the lion as the national animal and a census showed a steep fall in numbers. Option A is wrong because 1972 is the year of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, the law under which reserves and protected areas are notified; the Act came first and the scheme followed. Option C is wrong because 1980 is the year of the Forest (Conservation) Act, which restricts the diversion of forest land. Option D is wrong because 1992 is the year Project Elephant was launched, and examiners frequently pair the two schemes to see whether a candidate can separate them. Keep the chain in mind: Act of 1972, Project Tiger 1973, Project Elephant 1992, NTCA 2006.

The correct answer is A, 29 July. Global Tiger Day, also called International Tiger Day, was adopted at the St Petersburg tiger summit of 2010, where the thirteen tiger range countries agreed on the goal of doubling wild tiger numbers. Option B is wrong because 5 June is World Environment Day, observed since 1973 after the Stockholm Conference of 1972. Option C is wrong because 3 March is World Wildlife Day, marking the signing of CITES in 1973. Option D is wrong because 22 May is the International Day for Biological Diversity, which recalls the adoption of the text of the Convention on Biological Diversity in 1992. Days are a favourite one-mark question, so learn these four together with 29 July for the tiger and 12 August for the elephant.

The correct answer is D, Ecotone. An ecotone is the transition zone where two different ecosystems meet and mix, such as the belt between a grassland and a forest, an estuary between a river and the sea, or a mangrove strip between land and ocean. It holds species of both neighbouring communities along with a few of its own, so the number of species and their density are often higher in it. This crowding at the edge is called the edge effect, and species found only in such a belt are called edge species. A is wrong because the ecosphere means the whole living world of the earth taken together with its environment. B is wrong because ecoboundary is not a term used in ecology. C is wrong because ecotwin is not an ecological term either. Exam tip: tie ecotone to the edge effect, and keep ecotone, a zone, apart from ecocline, a gradual gradient.

The correct answer is B, Dehradun. The Forest Survey of India, set up in 1981, has its headquarters at Dehradun in Uttarakhand, the city that is also home to the Forest Research Institute and the Indira Gandhi National Forest Academy, which makes Dehradun the centre of forestry work in the country. The organisation maps forest and tree cover from satellite imagery and publishes the India State of Forest Report every two years, grading cover as very dense, moderately dense, open forest and scrub by canopy density. Option A, New Delhi, is the seat of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, which is the parent ministry but not the survey itself. Option C, Bhopal, hosts the Indian Institute of Forest Management, a separate institution that trains forest managers. Option D, Coimbatore, has the Institute of Forest Genetics and Tree Breeding. Questions on forestry institutions and their locations are common, so keep these four apart.

The correct answer is B, Article 6. It holds all the market machinery of the Paris Agreement: Article 6.2 lets two countries cooperate bilaterally and transfer Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes with a corresponding adjustment so the same tonne is not counted twice, Article 6.4 establishes a centralised crediting mechanism supervised by a United Nations body as the successor to the Clean Development Mechanism, and Article 6.8 covers non-market approaches such as finance and technology transfer. A is wrong because Article 2 states the purpose of the agreement, including holding the temperature rise well below two degrees Celsius. C is wrong because Article 9 deals with climate finance from developed to developing countries. D is wrong because Article 14 provides for the global stocktake, the periodic review of collective progress. Note the coincidence candidates stumble on: Article 6 of the Kyoto Protocol is Joint Implementation, a different thing.

The correct answer is B, Kerala. Periyar Tiger Reserve lies in the Idukki and Pathanamthitta districts of Kerala, around the Periyar reservoir created by the Mullaperiyar dam, and Kerala's other tiger reserve is Parambikulam. Option A is wrong because Karnataka's reserves are Bandipur, Nagarhole, Bhadra, Kali and Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple. Option C is wrong because Tamil Nadu has Kalakad-Mundanthurai, Mudumalai, Anamalai and Sathyamangalam; Mudumalai adjoins Bandipur across the state border, which is the usual trap in Western Ghats questions. Option D is wrong because Andhra Pradesh shares Nagarjunsagar-Srisailam with Telangana. The Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve stitches several of these together, which is why candidates confuse the states of neighbouring reserves. Periyar is also remembered for its eco-development programme, in which former poachers were employed as guides, a model question papers describe as community participation in conservation. Keep the reservoir and the state together in memory.

The correct answer is B, 100 metres. The Rules define a silence zone as the area up to 100 metres around a hospital, an educational institution or a court, and such an area has to be declared by the competent authority. Inside it the limits are the strictest of the four zones, 50 decibel by day and 40 by night, and horns, drums, loudspeakers and firecrackers are not allowed. A is wrong because 50 is the decibel limit of the silence zone by day, not a distance, and the number is placed in the options to mislead. C is wrong because 200 metres has no place in these Rules. D is wrong because 500 metres is far wider than the Rules provide; the limit is deliberately kept small so that the zone can actually be enforced around a single building.

The correct answer is D, very dense forest. The Forest Survey of India divides forest cover by the proportion of ground shaded by the tree canopy. Above seventy per cent the patch is very dense forest; from forty up to seventy per cent it is moderately dense forest; from ten up to forty per cent it is open forest; and below ten per cent it is scrub, which is counted separately and not as forest cover. Option A, open forest, therefore belongs to the ten to forty band and makes up a large share of the recorded cover in India. Option B, scrub, is the degraded category below ten per cent. Option C, moderately dense forest, is the forty to seventy band. A connected definition worth learning is that any patch of one hectare or more with more than ten per cent canopy is counted as forest cover whatever its legal status, which is why orchards and plantations can enter the figure.

The correct answer is C, the climax community. Succession is a directional process: each community changes the place a little, making it fit for the next, until a community arrives that is in balance with the climate of the region and can replace itself generation after generation without being replaced by another. That is the climax community, and in most of India it is some kind of forest. Option A is wrong because the pioneer community is the first to arrive on the bare site, made of hardy organisms such as lichens on rock or phytoplankton in water. Option B is wrong because a seral community is any of the intermediate communities on the way, and the whole sequence of them is called a sere. Option D is wrong because pelagic refers to the open water zone of a lake or an ocean and is a description of habitat, not a stage of succession. Frederic Clements argued that in a given climatic region succession always leads to one climax, a view called the monoclimax theory.

The correct answer is A, the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972. Section 38V of that Act, inserted in 2006, requires the State government to notify a tiger reserve on the recommendation of the National Tiger Conservation Authority, with a core or critical tiger habitat to be kept inviolate and a buffer area in which coexistence is allowed, and to prepare a Tiger Conservation Plan. Option B is wrong because the Indian Forest Act, 1927 deals with reserved, protected and village forests and the levy of duty on timber. Option C is wrong because the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 is the general enabling law under which eco-sensitive zones and impact assessment rules are issued. Option D is wrong because the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 governs access to biological resources and benefit sharing, not tiger habitat.

The correct answer is B, 78 per cent. Dry air is about seventy-eight per cent nitrogen by volume, which makes the atmosphere the great reservoir of the nitrogen cycle, yet the triple bond of the nitrogen molecule is so strong that plants and animals cannot use the gas directly and depend on fixation. Option A is wrong because twenty-one per cent is the share of oxygen, the second most abundant gas. Option C is wrong because about four hundredths of one per cent is the share of carbon dioxide, small in quantity but decisive for photosynthesis and for the greenhouse effect. Option D is wrong because no single gas forms ninety-three per cent of air; argon, the commonest of the inert gases in air, is well under one per cent.

The correct answer is B, the Forest Rights Act of 2006. Its full name is the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, and it recognises individual rights over land that such families were cultivating, community rights over grazing grounds and water bodies, and rights over minor forest produce, while making the gram sabha the authority that verifies claims. Option A, the Indian Forest Act of 1927, is the colonial parent statute that classifies forests as reserved, protected and village forests and treats most local use as a privilege rather than a right. Option C, the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972, deals with the protection of species, national parks and sanctuaries. Option D, the Environment Protection Act of 1986, is the umbrella law passed after the Bhopal tragedy and covers pollution and environmental clearance generally. The 2006 Act is often asked together with the Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas Act of 1996.

The correct answer is C, Water Conservation. Tarun Bharat Sangh works on water conservation, and its base is at Bhikampura in Alwar district of Rajasthan. Led by Rajendra Singh, known as the waterman of India, villagers of the area built and repaired thousands of johads, the traditional earthen check dams that hold rainwater and let it sink into the ground. Wells filled again, fields came back under crops and streams such as the Arvari, dry for years, began to flow, which is why the body is studied as a model of community-led water harvesting. Rajendra Singh received the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2001 and the Stockholm Water Prize in 2015. A is wrong because women's groups are part of the work but not its field. B is wrong because fighting corruption is not its subject. D is wrong because it is not a tribal youth organisation, and Alwar is not a tribal belt. Exam tip: Tarun Bharat Sangh, Rajendra Singh, johads of Alwar and the revived Arvari river.

The correct answer is B, Manas. Manas in Assam, a World Heritage Site on the Bhutan border, was one of the nine reserves notified when Project Tiger began in 1973, along with Corbett, Kanha, Ranthambore, Bandipur, Melghat, Simlipal, Palamau and the Sundarbans. Option A is wrong because Tadoba-Andhari in Maharashtra was added later, although Tadoba had been a national park since 1955. Option C is wrong because Pilibhit in Uttar Pradesh is a recent reserve and is better remembered as the winner of the first international award for doubling its tiger numbers. Option D is wrong because Dudhwa in Uttar Pradesh, on the Nepal border, also came after the first list. The quickest way to hold the nine in memory is one reserve for each of the nine States as they then were.

The correct answer is C, Garhwal Himalayas. The Chipko movement began in 1973 in the Garhwal Himalayas, in Chamoli district of what is now Uttarakhand, when villagers hugged trees to stop contractors from felling them. Its name comes from the Hindi word chipko, to cling. Chandi Prasad Bhatt led the first protest at Mandal village, Gaura Devi led the women of Reni village in 1974, and Sunderlal Bahuguna carried the message across the hills with the slogan that the soil, water and pure air are the real produce of a forest. The movement led to a fifteen-year ban on green felling above 1,000 metres in the Himalayan forests of Uttar Pradesh in 1980. Option A is wrong because Patna in Bihar has no link with it. Option B is wrong because Thrissur is in Kerala, far from the movement. Option D is wrong because Jammu was never its centre. Exam tip: Chipko 1973, Garhwal; Appiko 1983, Karnataka.