Which State Government launched the State-Level Committee for Vulture Conservation (SLCVC), proposed by the national action for the protection of vultures in India?

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Correct — A, Tamil Nadu. The Government of Tamil Nadu constituted the State-Level Committee for Vulture Conservation (SLCVC) in October 2022, and the phrase in the stem — "proposed by the national action for the protection of vultures" — points to the Union Environment Ministry's Action Plan for Vulture Conservation (APVC) 2020-2025, which is what the committee exists to deliver on the ground. The committee was created at the request of the State's Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, who chairs it, with nine other members; that membership list is the real tell. It includes the Director of Animal Husbandry and the Director of the Drugs Control, Food Safety and Drug Administration wing alongside conservation non-profits working in the Nilgiri landscape, because the agent that destroyed India's vultures was a veterinary pharmaceutical, not a poacher or a bulldozer, and a forest department alone cannot regulate a drug. Its written mandate matches that logic: scientific management of carcass dumps, laboratory analysis of cattle-carcass samples to detect banned NSAID residues, an enforcement mechanism against drugs found toxic to vultures, more breeding and rescue centres, regular population monitoring, participation in the nationwide vulture census, identification of 'Vulture Safe Zones', and an annual report on implementation of the Action Plan. Tamil Nadu had already moved further than most States on the pharmaceutical side, which is why it is the State this committee came from: in 2015 it became the first State to ban the veterinary use of ketoprofen, in the Nilgiris, Erode and Coimbatore districts, and in 2022 its drugs control department proceeded against 104 suppliers, distributors, manufacturers and retailers of diclofenac. The birds it is protecting are the white-rumped, long-billed and red-headed vultures, all Critically Endangered, and the Endangered Egyptian vulture, surviving mainly in the Nilgiri forest landscape the State shares with Karnataka and Kerala — a population that no single department, and no single State, can secure alone.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) Sikkim is the reflex answer on any 'which State acted first on the environment' question, because it was India's first fully organic State and is genuinely a conservation front-runner. But its vultures are overwhelmingly high-altitude birds — the Himalayan griffon and the bearded vulture — which were far less affected by diclofenac than the lowland Gyps species, since treated cattle carcasses are scarce at those elevations. The State-Level Committee for Vulture Conservation reported in October 2022 was Tamil Nadu's.  (c) The strongest distractor, because Assam really is a vulture State: it hosts one of India's vulture conservation breeding centres, set up after the pioneering facility at Pinjore in Haryana, and its Gyps populations were among those tracked through the crash of the 1990s. A candidate who has filed 'Assam' and 'vulture' together will pick it. But a captive-breeding centre is a different instrument from an inter-departmental coordination committee under the Action Plan, and the committee in this question is Tamil Nadu's.  (d) Meghalaya is biodiversity-rich and appears often in wildlife current affairs — Nokrek Biosphere Reserve, its living root bridges, its sacred groves and its caves — but not for vulture administration. Note the setter's device here: three north-eastern States are ranged against one southern State, which invites the candidate either to pick the geographical odd one out on principle, or to assume that any wildlife story must come from the north-east. Neither shortcut works.

Concept: India's vulture collapse is the most severe recorded decline of any bird group anywhere. Nine vulture species occur in India; between 1993 and 2002 the white-rumped vulture (Gyps bengalensis) fell by about 99.7 per cent and the long-billed and slender-billed vultures by about 97.4 per cent. In 2003 a team led by Lindsay Oaks traced the cause to diclofenac, a cheap non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug given to working cattle; a vulture that feeds on a carcass treated shortly before death suffers visceral gout and kidney failure. Modelling showed that contamination of well under 1 per cent of carcasses was enough to drive the crash. Because vultures were India's carcass-disposal system, their loss let feral dog numbers surge, with documented consequences for rabies deaths. The Government of India banned the veterinary use of diclofenac on 11 March 2006 and capped human diclofenac vials at 3 ml in 2015 to stop diversion to cattle. The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change followed with the Action Plan for Vulture Conservation 2020-2025, which asks States to build their own institutional machinery for it.

State PCS 2023 Q46 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2023 Q46 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer