1. Which ambitious initiative in India was begun on April Fool’s Day, 1973, to preserve a graceful but endangered mammal?
2. In which US National Park can one witness the eruption of the famous cone geyser, Old Faithful?
3. Spread over 4,954 square kilometres, which sanctuary is considered the largest wildlife sanctuary in India?
4. The Dachigam National Park is one of the last refuges of the Kashmir stag. How is this endangered corvine known to the locals?
5. Name the national park in Manipur that is considered the only floating national park in the world.
6. Which national park in Madhya Pradesh is considered the original setting for Rudyard Kipling’s classic work The Jungle Book ?
7. By what name is Hailey National Park, the country’s oldest established national park, now known?
8. What was established by Rom and Zai Whitaker in 1976 on the outskirts of Chennail to secure breeding populations of three species a large Indian reptile?
9. In 2008, an Omani sanctuary was removed from UNESCO’s World Heritage List because of that nation’s decision to reduce the size of the protected area by 90 per cent. Which animal is mainly protected there?
10. After which siblings from an eminent Indian family are the Borivali and Nagarhole National Parks officially named?
11. The Point Calimere Wildlife and Bird Sanctuary in Tamil Nadu and the Keoladeo National Park in Rajasthan are two Ramsar Sites in the country. What are Ramsar sites?
12. The Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area is potentially the world’s largest conservation area, spanning five southern African countries. Two are Zambia and Zimbabwe. Name the other three.
13. Which biodiversity hotspot in the southern part of our country was constituted by UNESCO in September 1986?
14. If one wanted to scale Mt. Everest, which national park should one be in?
15. In which Union Territory can one visit the Marine National Parks named after Mahtama Gandhi and Rani of Jhansi?
Answers: 1. Project Tiger; 2. Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming; 3. The Wild Ass Sanctuary in the Little Rann of Kutch; 4. Hangul; 5. Keibul Lamjao; 6. Pench; 7. Jim Corbett National Park; 8. The Madras Crocodile Bank; 9. The Arabian Oryx; 10. Sanjay and Rajiv Gandhi; 11. Wetlands deemed to be of ‘international importance’ under Ramsar Convention (the international treaty for the conservation and sustainable utilisation of wetlands); 12. Angola, Botswana and Namibia; 13. Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve; 14. Sagarmatha National Park; 15. Andaman & Nicobar Islands.
Clarification: The longest river that flows entirely in India is Godavari and not Krishna. Encyclopedia Britannica says the length of the former is 910 miles (1,465km), while that of the latter is about 800 miles (1,290km).
