Practice Test 19

India's forests and wildlife represent a biological heritage of extraordinary richness and global significance, encompassing a diversity of ecosystems ranging from the tropical rainforests of the Western Ghats and the Andaman Islands to the temperate and alpine forests of the Himalayan ranges, the dry deciduous forests of the Deccan plateau, the mangrove forests of the Sundarbans and the western coastline, the grasslands of the northeastern plains, and the desert scrub of Rajasthan and Gujarat. The country harbours an estimated seventy to eighty percent of the world's wild tiger population, making it the global stronghold for this iconic and critically important apex predator, and is also home to the world's largest populations of Asian elephants, one-horned rhinoceroses, Asiatic lions, snow leopards, and numerous other mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and plants found nowhere else in the world. Project Tiger, launched in 1973 under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's government, is widely regarded as one of the most successful conservation programmes ever undertaken anywhere in the world for a large mammal species. Beginning with nine tiger reserves covering approximately sixteen thousand square kilometres, it has expanded to cover over fifty-three reserves spanning more than seventy-five thousand square kilometres across the country, with the tiger population estimated at approximately three thousand two hundred animals in the most recent census, up from approximately one thousand eight hundred at the low point of the mid-2000s. The National Tiger Conservation Authority oversees Project Tiger, establishing norms for reserve management, ensuring that core areas are maintained free from human disturbance, and facilitating the relocation of villages from inside critical tiger habitats to reduce conflict between wildlife and resident communities. Project Elephant similarly provides support to states for the conservation of elephant habitats, management of elephant corridors that connect fragmented forest patches, and mitigation of the human-elephant conflict that causes significant casualties and crop losses in states with large elephant populations. The Wildlife Protection Act of 1972, the Forest Conservation Act of 1980, and the Biological Diversity Act of 2002 provide the statutory framework for wildlife and biodiversity conservation, protecting scheduled species from hunting and trade, requiring central government approval for the diversion of forest land for non-forest purposes, and establishing the legal basis for access and benefit sharing from the use of biological resources. Community reserves and conservation reserves offer a participatory approach to conservation that involves local communities as active partners in protecting wildlife, acknowledging the centuries-old relationship between forest-dwelling communities and the natural environment they inhabit. Coastal regulation zone notifications protect the ecologically sensitive coastal ecosystems including mangroves, coral reefs, and sea grass beds from indiscriminate development.