Day-564 | Daily MCQs | UPSC Prelims | ENVIRONMENT

Answer: C
Explanation:
Statement 1 is correct but statement 2 is incorrect: Wild pigs and nilgai, among others, enjoy the same level of protection in the country. Wild pigs and nilgai are placed under Schedule II of the Wildlife Protection Act after the recent amendments made to the list in 2023.
● The hunting of these animals by any individual is prohibited as per the provisions of the Wildlife Protection Act.
● If the Chief Wildlife Warden or the authorised officer is satisfied that any wild animal specified in Schedule II has become dangerous to human life or to property (including standing crops on any land) or is disabled or diseased beyond recovery, only then the hunting of such animals is permitted by written order of the authority.
● The provisions of the amended act also mention that the Central Government through a notification can declare any wild animal specified in Schedule II to be vermin for any area. The period for which it is declared as vermin should also be specified in the notification.

Answer. A
Explanation: An extraordinary discovery has been made in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas in the USA, as palaeontologists have identified a new dinosaur species that lived approximately 96 million years ago. The species, named Ampelognathus coheni, is particularly significant because herbivorous dinosaur fossils are seldom found in North Texas.
It is the first small-bodied ornithopod dinosaur discovered from the Lewisville Formation.
Dinosaurs roamed Earth roughly 175 million years ago, and most were wiped out by an extinction event roughly 65 million years ago.
Additional information: Similar discovery from India
Indian palaeontologists have unearthed one of the world’s oldest fossils of a long-neck, plant-eating dinosaur from Thar desert in Rajasthan.
The dinosaur has been named Tharosaurus indicus after the desert and is the oldest known member of a family of the ancient creatures called Diplodocoidea. A more famous member of the same family is Diplodocus, made popular by blockbuster movies like Jurassic Park.
Tharosaurus is half of a size of a diplodocus. Its neck-to-tail length is about 10-13 mt while that of a diplodocus was around 26 mt.

Answer. C
Explanation: Options 1, 2, 3 and 5 are correct.
While humans, short-finned pilot whales, killer whales are among the only long-lived mammals that undergo menopause, dolphins continue to reproduce throughout their life. Dolphins don’t experience menopause.
● After decades of observations in a rainforest in Uganda, the scientists discovered that some chimpanzees go through menopause, too. Without much disease, Ngogo chimpanzees may live long enough to experience menopause.
● A female orangutan named ‘Gina’ at Durrell wildlife park (Jerzey Island) is believed to have gone through the menopause, the first time this is known to have been medically recorded. Orangutans and humans share 97.6% of their DNA. This research has established that orangutans experience menopause too.

Answer. C
Explanation:
Statements 1 and 3 are correct: “Section 38V” of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 (as amended in 2006) explains the core or critical tiger habitat as well as the buffer or peripheral area of a tiger reserve.
A tiger reserve includes two parts:
A. Core area or critical tiger habitat (National Park or Sanctuary status).
B. Buffer or peripheral area
The phrase ‘core or critical tiger habitat’ is mentioned only in the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, as a sequel to the amendment made to the said Act in 2006. It is NOT defined in the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006.
Critical tiger habitats are considered as inviolate areas in tiger reserves. ‘Core or critical tiger habitat’ is different from ‘critical wildlife habitat’. Since tigers are territorial big cats, hence considering their social land tenure dynamics, the ‘core / critical tiger habitat’ has been viewed separately from the ‘critical wildlife habitat’, which is applicable to other wild animal species.
Statement 2 is correct: The phrase ‘critical wildlife habitat’ is defined only in the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, and NOT in the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972. Critical Wildlife Habitat (CWH) is notified within national parks and wildlife sanctuaries.
FRA defines CWHs as ‘areas of national parks and sanctuaries where it has been specifically and clearly established, case by case, on the basis of scientific and objective criteria, that such areas are required to be kept as inviolate for the purposes of wildlife conservation’. In order to notify a CWH, the Act requires state governments to establish that the presence of right-holders is causing irreversible damage to wildlife and their habitats, and that co-existence between rights holders and wildlife was not a reasonable option.
While the Ministry of Tribal Affairs is the nodal authority for the Forest Rights Act, the law identifies the Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change (MoEF&CC) as the agency to notify the guidelines regarding the notification and declaration of critical wildlife habitats.
MoEF&CC finally issued CWH guidelines in January 2018. Key features of guidelines:
● The Chief Wildlife Warden of a state will notify an Expert Committee for the purpose of identification of critical wildlife habitats (CWH) in a national park or sanctuary.
● The Expert Committee will identify areas within national parks and sanctuaries, based on scientific and objective criteria relevant to the protected area, required to be kept inviolate for the purpose of wildlife conservation.
● The Expert Committee shall issue a public notice on the intention to notify CWH. The public notice shall include details of areas required to be kept inviolate, criteria adopted for CWH identification, implication of the notification on existing rights, and all options of resettlement and rehabilitation schemes, if applicable.
● The Expert Committee shall carry out open consultations with all stakeholders, and the proceedings of the consultations, especially the objections, will be documented appropriately.
● The committee will submit the CWH proposal to the Chief Wildlife Warden. The decision on the proposal will be taken by the Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife. A Ministry of Tribal Affairs representative would be invited during the deliberation of the proposal by the standing committee. Following the committee’s recommendation, the notification of CWH will be published in the official gazette.

Answer. C
Explanation: The ability to identify certain animals living in an environment through environmental DNA, or ‘eDNA.’ has revolutionized conservation and wildlife monitoring.
Environmental DNA or eDNA refers to eDNA is DNA shed by all organisms into their surroundings through natural processes during their lifetime or after death.
A new method has been developed by the researchers at the Laboratory for the Conservation of Endangered Species (LaCONES) which is cheaper, faster, and highly scalable to large freshwater and marine ecosystems which can help in monitoring and conserving the rich biodiversity of our country.
LaCONES is a CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) laboratory headquartered in Hyderabad.
The new non-invasive method can assess the total biodiversity of any ecosystem by sequencing the DNA fragments found in the environmental samples such as water, soil or air. This method can detect all kinds of organisms, including viruses, bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes such as fungi, plants, insects, birds, fish and other animals from just a few litres of water sample without any direct capture or counting of species.
The scientists tested their method in the highly biodiverse wetland ecosystem of Chilika Lagoon in Odisha, the country’s largest brackish water lagoon. By comparing over 10 billion sequences of eDNA fragments from multiple seasonal samples with a large database of reference sequences from all the known species, the researchers were able to detect organisms across the tree of life.