The great Indian bustard, a critically endangered bird, is the state bird of which state?

The correct answer is B, 1973. Project Tiger began on 1 April 1973 with a small group of reserves, Jim Corbett among the first, and introduced the idea of a strictly protected core area with a buffer zone of regulated use around it. Option A is wrong but is the commonest confusion, because 1972 is the year of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, the law that made such a project possible; the project itself came a year later. 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 of Project Elephant. Keep the four dates in a row: the Act in 1972, Project Tiger in 1973, the crocodile project in 1975 and Project Elephant in 1992.

The correct answer is A, the National Tiger Conservation Authority. It was created by the amendment of the Wild Life (Protection) Act in 2006, which gave Project Tiger a statutory footing, and it approves tiger conservation plans, notifies core and buffer areas with the states and conducts the national tiger estimation. Option B is wrong because the Wildlife Institute of India at Dehradun is a training and research institution and assists in surveys rather than administering the project. Option C is wrong because the Zoological Survey of India documents the fauna of the country. Option D is wrong because the Central Zoo Authority recognises and regulates zoos. The National Board for Wild Life, chaired by the Prime Minister, advises on policy above all of these.

The correct answer is B, Kuno National Park, in the Sheopur district of Madhya Pradesh, where the first eight cheetahs from Namibia were released into enclosures on 17 September 2022. Kuno was chosen for its open grassland and scrub, the habitat a cheetah hunts in, and for its prey base of chital and chinkara. Option A is wrong because Bandhavgarh in Madhya Pradesh is a tiger reserve of dense sal forest, not cheetah country. Option C is wrong because Ranthambore in Rajasthan is likewise a tiger reserve. Option D is wrong because Gir in Gujarat holds the Asiatic lion, and Kuno had in fact been prepared years earlier as a possible second home for those lions. Gandhi Sagar Wildlife Sanctuary has since been readied as a second cheetah site.

The correct answer is B, 1952. The cheetah is the only large mammal India is known to have lost in historical times, and the government declared it extinct in the country in 1952, a few years after the last wild Asiatic cheetahs were shot. Option A is wrong but is closely linked, because 1947 is the year in which those last cheetahs are believed to have been killed, in the Koriya area of the former Surguja region, now in Chhattisgarh; the declaration came later. Option C is wrong because 1962 has no connection with the cheetah. Option D is wrong because 1972 is the year of the Wild Life (Protection) Act. Hold the two cheetah dates together: 1947 for the last killing and 1952 for the declaration of extinction.

The correct answer is B, the elephant, declared the National Heritage Animal in 2010 in recognition of its place in Indian culture and of the need to protect its habitat and corridors; Project Elephant had already been launched for it in 1992. Option A is wrong because the tiger is the national animal of India, a different designation. Option C is wrong because the lion, though it was the national animal before the tiger replaced it, carries no such title today and survives in the wild only in the Gir forest of Gujarat. Option D is wrong because the Gangetic river dolphin is the National Aquatic Animal, declared in 2009. This set of four titles, with the peacock as the national bird, is among the most frequently asked groups in the subject.