Ecosystems and Biodiversity Questions and Answers

Answer: B

Neelakurinji's habitat is Eravikulam National Park.

Neelakurinji (Strobilanthes kunthiana) is a shrub of the high-altitude shola grasslands of the Western Ghats that flowers en masse once every twelve years, turning the hills blue. Its best-known home is Eravikulam National Park near Munnar in Kerala, and its mass flowering of 2018 was widely reported.

The other parks are far from the Western Ghats: Manas is in Assam, Valmiki in Bihar and Bandhavgarh in Madhya Pradesh.

Answer: A

Only statement (i) is correct, so the answer is (i) only.

SECURE Himalaya is a project for securing livelihoods and the conservation, sustainable use and restoration of high-range Himalayan ecosystems, so (i) is right. It covers high-altitude landscapes in Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand and Sikkim, with the snow leopard as a flagship species.

Statement (ii) is wrong because the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change launched it in 2017 with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), funded by the Global Environment Facility, not with the IUCN.

Answer: C

The largest ecological unit among the options is the biome.

The levels of ecological organisation, from smallest to largest, are organism, population, community, ecosystem, biome and biosphere. A biome is a large region with a characteristic climate and vegetation, such as tropical rainforest, desert, grassland or tundra, and it contains many ecosystems.

An organism is a single living thing, a population is all the individuals of one species in an area, and an ecosystem is a community together with its physical environment. All three are smaller than a biome.

Answer: D

The Ramsar Convention is for the conservation of wetlands.

The Convention on Wetlands of International Importance was signed at Ramsar, Iran, in 1971. It commits member countries to conserve and wisely use wetlands, and to designate important ones as Ramsar sites. India joined in 1982; Chilika Lake and Keoladeo National Park were its first sites.

It does not cover mountains, grasslands or forests as such; forests and other habitats are dealt with under other agreements, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Answer: D

The answer is All of the above.

Each of the three listed causes is one of the main recognised threats to wild mammals, and in Tripura they act together:

• Loss and fragmentation of habitat: forest is cleared for settlement, plantations such as rubber, roads and shifting cultivation, breaking ranges into small patches.
• Invasion by exotic species: introduced plants and animals crowd out native vegetation and compete with native fauna.
• Over-exploitation of resources: hunting and the overuse of forest produce reduce populations directly.

Since all three contribute, picking only one of them is incomplete.

Answer: C

The Red Data Book contains data on all endangered species.

The Red Data Book, maintained by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), records plants, animals and fungi that are threatened with extinction, sorted into categories such as critically endangered, endangered and vulnerable. It is used to plan conservation.

It does not list all plant or all animal species, only those at risk, and its purpose is to track species that can still be saved rather than those already extinct.

Answer: A

Dalong village is in Manipur.

Dalong, a village in Tamenglong district of Manipur, was declared a Biodiversity Heritage Site under Section 37(1) of the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, which allows state governments to notify areas of biodiversity importance in consultation with local bodies.

Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram and Tripura have their own biodiversity heritage sites, but Dalong is not one of theirs.

Answer: A

The answer is 1 and 2 are correct.

The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, adopted in 2000 under the Convention on Biological Diversity, is an international agreement (statement 1) that aims to ensure the safe handling, transport and use of living modified organisms produced by modern biotechnology (statement 2).

It does not deal with radioactive materials, which are governed by agreements under the International Atomic Energy Agency, so any option including statement 3 is wrong.

Answer: C

The Butterfly Park is at Trishna Wildlife Sanctuary.

Tripura's Butterfly Eco Park, the first in the northeast, opened in 2016 at Chottakhola in South Tripura next to the Trishna Wildlife Sanctuary, which is also known for its Indian gaur (bison). It has a breeding facility and around 250 butterfly species.

Sepahijala is known for its zoo and clouded leopard national park, Gumti for its reservoir and Rowa for being the smallest sanctuary of the state; none has the Butterfly Park.

Answer: D

Top Slip is the Indira Gandhi Wildlife Sanctuary.

Top Slip is a well-known spot in the Anamalai hills of Coimbatore district, Tamil Nadu, inside the Indira Gandhi Wildlife Sanctuary and National Park, now the Anamalai Tiger Reserve. Its name comes from the old practice of sliding timber logs down the hill.

Manjira is a sanctuary in Telangana, Simlipal a national park in Odisha, and Periyar a tiger reserve in Kerala; none is called Top Slip.