Environment & Ecology Quiz: National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries

Declared in 1936 in the hills of present-day Uttarakhand, it was named after the governor of the United Provinces, later renamed Ramganga and finally named after the hunter turned naturalist Jim Corbett.

Gir, in the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, is the only place where the Asiatic lion survives in the wild, and its dry deciduous forest and scrub make the habitat that keeps the population alive.

Kaziranga lies on the floodplain of the Brahmaputra in Assam, where tall elephant grass and seasonal flooding suit the rhinoceros, and the park is inscribed as a natural World Heritage Site.

Project Tiger was launched a year after the Wild Life Protection Act came into force, and it created tiger reserves in which the core area is kept free of human activity while a buffer area allows regulated use; the National Tiger Conservation Authority now oversees the programme.

It is the law under which a state government notifies a national park or a sanctuary, under which species are placed in schedules according to the protection they need, and under which hunting of protected animals is prohibited.

Keoladeo Ghana in Rajasthan is a shallow wetland created long ago as a duck shooting reserve of the rulers of Bharatpur, and it now shelters large numbers of resident and migratory birds every winter; it is a World Heritage Site.

Dachigam lies close to Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir and is the last stronghold of this deer, which moves between the upper and lower parts of the park with the seasons.

Silent Valley lies in the Nilgiri hills of Kerala and protects one of the last stretches of undisturbed tropical evergreen forest in the Western Ghats, whose best known resident is the lion-tailed macaque.

Hemis lies in the cold, high altitude desert of Ladakh, covers a very large stretch of mountain terrain, and is the best known habitat of the snow leopard, along with the bharal and the Tibetan wolf.

It added two categories beyond the national park and the sanctuary: a conservation reserve, usually on state land adjoining a protected area and meant to guard a corridor between habitats, and a community reserve, on private or community land where the people themselves agree to protect wildlife.

In a national park the whole ecosystem is protected, rights are settled before the area is notified, grazing and cultivation are prohibited and the boundary cannot be altered except through a resolution of the state legislature.

The Desert National Park, spread over sand dunes and open grassland near Jaisalmer and Barmer, is the best known habitat of this tall, heavy ground bird, whose numbers have fallen sharply and which is the state bird of Rajasthan.