Which of the following parks/sanctuaries come under the project tiger in Bihar?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — A, Valmiki National Park. Valmiki, in the West Champaran district of Bihar on the Nepal border, is the only protected area in the State ever notified under Project Tiger — and it is also Bihar's only national park, so a single site carries both distinctions. The sequence is worth learning whole: declared a wildlife sanctuary in 1978, brought under Project Tiger in 1989–90 as India's 18th tiger reserve, notified a national park in 1990, and re-notified as a tiger reserve in 2012 when core and buffer were formally demarcated. The reserve runs to 899.38 sq km — 598.45 sq km of core critical tiger habitat plus 300.93 sq km of buffer — while the national park and sanctuary complex itself is put at 898.45 sq km. The 2022 All India Tiger Estimation counted 54 tigers inside it, which makes Valmiki one of the clearer recoveries outside the classic tiger States. Geographically it occupies the Someshwar and Dun hill tract of the Gandak basin: the Gandak forms its western boundary, at Valmikinagar the rivulets Sonha and Pachnad join it at the confluence called Triveni, and the Harha–Masan system rising in these forests becomes the Burhi Gandak further south. Seven Champion and Seth forest types have been mapped inside it, from Bhabar–Dun sal forest to eastern wet alluvial grassland, with an isolated chir pine patch in the Raghia block, and 241 bird species have been recorded. Crucially it is contiguous with Nepal's Chitwan National Park, so the two form one trans-boundary tiger landscape. Options (b) and (c) name real Bihar protected areas — but both are wildlife sanctuaries outside Project Tiger, and that distinction is the entire question.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) A genuine Bihar sanctuary, and the cruellest option here because it sits in the very same district as Valmiki — West Champaran — so 'it is in the right part of Bihar' proves nothing. Established in 1978, it covers only 8.74 sq km around Udaypur Lake, a wetland of about 319 hectares, which became a Ramsar site on 25 September 2025 — after this exam. It is a waterbird sanctuary with no Project Tiger notification.  (c) Bihar's largest sanctuary by forest area — about 682 sq km in Munger district, established 1976, on the Kharagpur Hills at the northern edge of the Chota Nagpur plateau, best known for the hot springs at Bhimbandh, Sita Kund and Rishi Kund. Its sheer size persuades candidates it must be the tiger reserve, but size is not the test; an NTCA-recommended notification is, and Bhimbandh has never had one.  (d) Tempting only if you believe Bihar has no tiger reserve at all — a common assumption, because Bihar's recorded forest area is just 7,442 sq km, 7.90% of its geographical area, among the lowest shares in India. But scarcity of forest is not absence of a reserve. Bihar has exactly one, it holds 54 tigers, and option (a) names it.

Concept: Project Tiger was launched in April 1973 with nine reserves — Bandipur, Corbett, Kanha, Manas, Melghat, Palamau, Ranthambore, Similipal and Sunderbans — as a centrally sponsored scheme, not a statutory one. It acquired legal teeth only through the 2006 amendment to the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, which made the National Tiger Conservation Authority a statutory body and laid down how a tiger reserve is created. A State government issues the notification on the NTCA's recommendation. Inside it, the core or critical tiger habitat is identified on scientific and objective criteria and is to be kept inviolate for tiger conservation, without prejudice to the rights of Scheduled Tribes and other traditional forest dwellers; around that core a buffer zone is managed for coexistence, where the aim is a livelihood-compatible balance rather than exclusion. That two-zone architecture is why every tiger reserve is quoted as two numbers, and it is why Valmiki reads 598.45 core plus 300.93 buffer. Note the ladder carefully, because it is what the question turns on: a wildlife sanctuary or a national park is a notification under the 1972 Act made by the State, while a tiger reserve is an additional overlay created under the 2006 amendment. Bhimbandh and Udaypur have the first. Only Valmiki has the second.

State PCS 2025 Q114 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q114 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer