Project Tiger and Project Elephant: NTCA, Reserves and MIKE

The correct answer is B, 1973. Project Tiger began on 1 April 1973 as a centrally sponsored scheme with nine tiger reserves, in the same year in which the tiger replaced the lion as the national animal of India.

Option A, 1972, is the year of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, the law under which reserves and protected areas are declared, and candidates often confuse the law with the scheme that followed it. Option C, 1992, is the year in which Project Elephant was launched, the other great species programme of the country. Option D, 2005, is the year in which the loss of all the tigers of the Sariska reserve came to light and a Tiger Task Force was appointed, which led to the amendment of the law in the following year.

The correct answer is A, Jim Corbett National Park, in what is now Uttarakhand. It is the oldest national park of India, and the project was formally launched there on 1 April 1973.

Option B, Kanha in Madhya Pradesh, and option C, Bandipur in Karnataka, were both among the nine reserves with which the project began, which is what makes them good distractors, but the launch took place at Corbett. Option D, Kaziranga in Assam, is not a launch site either; it is known above all for the one horned rhinoceros and became a tiger reserve much later. A candidate should remember the nine original reserves as a set: Corbett, Manas, Palamau, Similipal, Kanha, Melghat, Bandipur, Ranthambore and the Sunderbans. The park is named after Jim Corbett, the hunter turned naturalist whose writings did much to make the tiger a matter of public concern in India.

The correct answer is A, the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972. The amending Act of 2006 inserted a new chapter into it, creating the National Tiger Conservation Authority and providing for tiger reserves with a critical tiger habitat and a buffer, as well as for the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau.

Option B, the Indian Forest Act, 1927, deals with reserved and protected forests and with forest produce, not with the Authority. Option C, the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, is the umbrella law passed after the Bhopal disaster and is the basis of rules on pollution and environmental clearance. Option D, the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, set up the National Biodiversity Authority and deals with access to biological resources and the sharing of benefits, and the similarity of the two names is the trap here.

The correct answer is B, 1992. Project Elephant was launched in February 1992 as a centrally sponsored scheme to help the states protect elephants, their habitats and their corridors, to reduce conflict between elephants and human beings and to improve the welfare of captive elephants.

Option A, 1973, belongs to Project Tiger, and the pair of years is the most commonly asked fact from this topic. Option C, 2010, is the year in which the elephant was declared the National Heritage Animal of India, a different event that is often mixed up with the launch of the project. Option D, 1986, is the year of the Environment (Protection) Act and of the Ganga Action Plan, neither of which concerns elephants. A simple way to keep the two projects apart is that the tiger came first, with the law of 1972 behind it, and the elephant followed nearly twenty years later.

The correct answer is A, 2010. The declaration followed the report of a task force on elephants and was meant to raise the status of the animal in policy and to strengthen the protection of its habitats and corridors.

Option B, 1992, is the year of the launch of Project Elephant itself, not of the declaration, and the two are the standard pair of distractors. Option C, 2005, is associated with the Sariska episode and the Tiger Task Force. Option D, 1973, is the year of Project Tiger and of the tiger becoming the national animal. Note the difference in terms: the tiger is the national animal, while the elephant is the national heritage animal, and an examiner will often set the two against each other in the same question.

The correct answer is A, monitoring the illegal killing of elephants. MIKE was set up under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. At selected sites, officials record every elephant carcass found and the cause of death in a standard form, so that the share of deaths due to poaching can be tracked and compared between countries and over time. Sites in South Asia, including several in India, have been covered since 2003.

Option B describes the all India tiger estimation carried out by the National Tiger Conservation Authority with the Wildlife Institute of India, which is a different exercise altogether. Option C and option D belong to climate and pollution monitoring and have nothing to do with the programme. The expansion of the name is itself the answer, which is why it is worth memorising.

The correct answer is A, Nagarjunsagar Srisailam, which spreads over the Nallamala hills in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and is the largest tiger reserve in the country by area.

Option B, the Sunderbans in West Bengal, is the only mangrove tiger habitat in India and one of the nine original reserves, but it is smaller. Option C, Corbett in Uttarakhand, is the park from which Project Tiger was launched and is among the best known reserves, yet size is not its distinction. Option D, Kanha in Madhya Pradesh, is another of the original nine and is famous as the home of the hard ground barasingha. Each of these three is the right answer to some other question about tiger reserves, which is exactly why they appear here.

The correct answer is A, 29 July. The day was agreed upon at the tiger summit held at St Petersburg in 2010, where the thirteen tiger range countries adopted the goal of doubling the number of wild tigers, and it is marked every year to draw attention to the conservation of the species.

Option B, 12 August, is World Elephant Day, the pairing that this topic always tests. Option C, 5 June, is World Environment Day, marked since the Stockholm Conference of 1972. Option D, 3 March, is World Wildlife Day, chosen because the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species was signed on that date in 1973. All four are days worth remembering together, since a single question often mixes them, and the safest way is to tie each date to the event behind it rather than to learn the list by rote.

The correct answer is A, New Delhi. The Global Tiger Forum was formed in the nineteen nineties as an international body of tiger range countries and others working for the conservation of the species, and its secretariat is in New Delhi, which reflects the share of the world's wild tigers that India holds.

Option B, Kathmandu, is the headquarters of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation and of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, not of the Forum. Option C, Geneva, houses the secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, among many other international bodies. Option D, Gland in Switzerland, is the headquarters of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which publishes the Red List, and of the World Wide Fund for Nature.

The correct answer is A, Schedule I. This schedule carries the species given the highest degree of protection, for which hunting is barred throughout India and the penalties are the severest the Act provides, with the offence being cognizable and non bailable. Both the tiger and the Asian elephant are in it, and both are also in Appendix I of CITES, so that international commercial trade in them is prohibited.

Option B, option C and option D name schedules that carry species with lesser degrees of protection and lighter penalties. A candidate should link the schedule to the animal: the tiger, the elephant, the one horned rhinoceros, the snow leopard, the great Indian bustard and the lion tailed macaque all belong to the first schedule, which is the list examiners draw upon most often.