MPSC 2024 Prelims Paper-I · Question 18 of 100

Correct — option (3), '(a) - (i), (b) - (iii), (c) - (ii), (d) - (iv)'. Each of the four protected areas printed in the second column is inseparable from one country, so the matching can be done from geography alone. India, statement (a), goes with (i) Jim Corbett: the park in the Himalayan foothills of Uttarakhand, established in 1936 as Hailey National Park and therefore the oldest national park in India, renamed after the hunter-turned-conservationist Jim Corbett in 1957, and the place where Project Tiger was launched in 1973. Ecuador, statement (b), goes with (iii) Galapagos: the volcanic archipelago lying roughly a thousand kilometres out in the Pacific from the South American mainland, Ecuadorian territory, made a national park in 1959, and famous as the islands whose finches, tortoises and mockingbirds Charles Darwin observed during the voyage of the Beagle. U.S.A., statement (c), goes with (ii) Grand Canyon: the gorge cut by the Colorado River across northern Arizona, protected as a national park in 1919. Australia, statement (d), goes with (iv) Great barrier reef: the world's largest coral reef system, stretching along the Queensland coast in the Coral Sea and managed as a marine park since 1975. That is exactly the set of pairings in option (3). Because all four are so strongly identified with their countries, the question is really a check on whether a candidate reads the printed columns as an answer — the left column and the right column are printed side by side purely as layout, and their adjacency on the page asserts no pairing at all. Anyone who assumes row-by-row correspondence will be led to option (1), which is wrong.

• (1)(a) - (i), (b) - (ii), (c) - (iii), (d) - (iv) — This is the pairing you get by simply reading the two printed columns straight across, and it is the trap the format is built around. It happens to be right about India and Jim Corbett and about Australia and the Great Barrier Reef, but it gives Ecuador the Grand Canyon and the United States the Galapagos — an exact transposition of the middle two. The Grand Canyon is the gorge of the Colorado River in Arizona and the Galapagos are Ecuadorian islands in the Pacific, so the two cannot be exchanged.
• (2)(a) - (iv), (b) - (iii), (c) - (ii), (d) - (i) — This option is right about Ecuador and the Galapagos and about the United States and the Grand Canyon, but it swaps the outer pair, putting the Great Barrier Reef in India and Jim Corbett in Australia. The Great Barrier Reef lies in the Coral Sea off the Queensland coast and India has no coral system remotely comparable in scale, while Jim Corbett National Park is in Uttarakhand. A candidate who verifies the two middle pairings, finds them correct and stops reading will select this option.
• (4)(a) - (iii), (b) - (i), (c) - (iv), (d) - (ii) — Every pairing in this option is wrong: the Galapagos are given to India, Jim Corbett to Ecuador, the Great Barrier Reef to the United States and the Grand Canyon to Australia. It is the option produced by shifting the whole right-hand column by two places, and it is detectable without any specialist knowledge because each of the four protected areas is named after a feature or person unmistakably tied to its own country. In matching questions it is always worth scanning for the option in which nothing lines up, since eliminating it costs no time.

The four sites in this question represent four different kinds of protected area, which is part of why they are examined together. Jim Corbett is a terrestrial wildlife park created for a large mammal, and its history traces the arc of Indian conservation from colonial game protection in 1936 through the tiger crisis of the early 1970s to Project Tiger in 1973. The Galapagos is an island ecosystem protected primarily for endemism — species found nowhere else, isolated by ocean, and central to the theory of evolution by natural selection. The Grand Canyon is a geological and landscape protection, a mile-deep section through nearly two billion years of rock cut by the Colorado River. The Great Barrier Reef is a marine protected area, the largest structure on earth built by living organisms, and now the most-watched indicator of ocean warming and coral bleaching. Between them they cover terrestrial, island, geological and marine conservation, which is the syllabus's whole range in four names.

Questions pairing famous protected areas with their countries are common in the environment and general-knowledge sections, and they are easy marks provided the candidate does not let the printed layout do the thinking. The commission prints the two columns side by side because the reader is supposed to match them; the row a name happens to occupy is not evidence, and in this question the straight-across reading is deliberately made into a wrong option that is nevertheless half right. Beyond the technique, this is a topic where a little extra preparation pays across many questions: the country, the state or province, the year of protection, and the single feature each site is known for. MPSC also asks the Indian side of this material in detail, so the national parks of Maharashtra and the tiger reserves of India deserve a separate list. The Indian half of this material is examined in far more detail than the world half, so a candidate who holds the six national parks of Maharashtra and the principal tiger reserves of India with their states will meet this theme more often in that form than in the international one printed here.

• Jim Corbett National Park in Uttarakhand was established in 1936 as Hailey National Park, is the oldest national park in India, and was the site at which Project Tiger was launched in 1973.
• The Galapagos Islands are Ecuadorian territory in the Pacific Ocean; the archipelago was declared a national park in 1959 and is famous for the endemic species observed by Charles Darwin during the voyage of the Beagle.
• The Grand Canyon, cut by the Colorado River in northern Arizona in the United States, was protected as a national park in 1919.
• The Great Barrier Reef, off the Queensland coast of Australia in the Coral Sea, is the world's largest coral reef system and has been managed as a marine park since 1975.
• In a match-the-columns question the two columns are printed side by side as layout only; row adjacency asserts no pairing and must never be read as one.

• Reading the two printed columns straight across as though adjacency were a pairing; that reading produces a wrong option here
• Checking only two pairings, finding them correct and selecting without testing the remaining two
• Confusing the Galapagos, an Ecuadorian island group in the Pacific, with mainland South American protection, or assuming an island group must belong to the nearest large country

MPSC sets match-the-columns items on protected areas, rivers, dams, tribes, festivals and folk arts, and the construction is consistent: one option pairs the columns in printed order, one or two transpose a single pair, and one is entirely scrambled. Because the wrong options differ from the right one by a swap rather than by an unknown fact, the marks are lost through incomplete checking rather than through ignorance. The reliable method is to establish the pairs you are certain of, eliminate every option that contradicts them, and only then decide between what remains — and to check all four pairs of the option you intend to mark before moving on.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which national park, established in 1936 and now in Uttarakhand, is the oldest in India and was the site at which Project Tiger was launched in 1973 ?

  • (a)Kanha National Park
  • (b)Jim Corbett National Park
  • (c)Kaziranga National Park
  • (d)Gir National Park

  Answer(b) Jim Corbett National Park — established in 1936 as Hailey National Park, it is India's oldest national park and was where Project Tiger was launched in 1973. Kaziranga in Assam is known for the one-horned rhinoceros and Gir in Gujarat for the Asiatic lion, while Kanha is a Madhya Pradesh tiger reserve.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Galapagos Islands, whose endemic species were observed by Charles Darwin during the voyage of the Beagle, belong to which country ?

  • (a)Peru
  • (b)Chile
  • (c)Ecuador
  • (d)Colombia

  Answer(c) Ecuador — the Galapagos archipelago lies in the Pacific Ocean roughly a thousand kilometres west of the South American mainland and is Ecuadorian territory, declared a national park in 1959. Chile's comparable Pacific possession is Easter Island, which is a different island group altogether.