The species which are in danger of extinction are known as?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — C, Endangered. The wording of the stem is the plain-English translation of the category's own name, and the IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria version 3.1 puts it in exactly those terms: a taxon is Endangered when the best available evidence indicates that it meets any of the criteria A to E for Endangered, and it is therefore considered to be facing a very high risk of extinction in the wild. That phrase — very high risk — is the middle rung of a three-rung ladder, and the ladder is what this question is really testing. Critically Endangered is defined as facing an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild; Endangered as facing a very high risk; Vulnerable as facing a high risk. Those three together are the threatened categories, and they sit inside a full list of nine: Extinct, Extinct in the Wild, Critically Endangered, Endangered, Vulnerable, Near Threatened, Least Concern, Data Deficient and Not Evaluated. What makes the modern system usable is that a species is not placed in a category by opinion. Criteria A to E are quantitative thresholds — the size of an observed or projected population reduction, the extent of occurrence and area of occupancy, a small population that is also declining, a very small or severely restricted population, and a quantitative analysis of extinction probability — and any one of them being met is enough. The Commission's own remark on this question draws the same line the Red List does: species facing a very high risk of extinction in the near future are Endangered, while species likely to become endangered in the near future if nothing is done for their conservation are Vulnerable. Indian examples make the rung concrete. The Ganges river dolphin, India's national aquatic animal and Bihar's flagship species in the Vikramshila sanctuary at Bhagalpur, is assessed Endangered; so is the Asian elephant; the Great Indian Bustard is Critically Endangered, one rung higher; and the gaur, Bihar's own state animal, is Vulnerable, one rung lower.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) The genuine near-miss, because Vulnerable is a real and current IUCN category — but it is one rung below. Version 3.1 defines it as facing a high risk of extinction in the wild, which in practice means a species likely to become endangered if the pressures on it are not removed. The distinction is present danger against prospective danger, and the stem says 'in danger of extinction', not 'likely to fall into danger'. Bihar's state animal the gaur, and the snow leopard since its 2017 reassessment, are Vulnerable rather than Endangered.  (b) This one is not a wrong rung on the ladder — it is not on the ladder at all. 'Rare' was a category in the OLD, pre-1994 IUCN Red Data Book system, alongside Indeterminate, Insufficiently Known and Out of Danger. IUCN replaced those subjective labels with the quantitative categories adopted in 1994 and revised as version 3.1 in 2001, and 'Rare' did not survive the change. Rarity now feeds in as evidence under the criteria — a small population or a restricted range — but it is no longer a status a species can be assigned.  (d) Extinct is the outcome, not the danger. IUCN defines a taxon as Extinct when there is no reasonable doubt that the last individual has died, and Extinct in the Wild when it survives only in cultivation, in captivity or as a naturalised population well outside its past range. A species that is extinct is no longer in danger of extinction, because the event has already happened — as with the cheetah, officially declared extinct in India in 1952. The option catches candidates who read 'extinction' in the stem and match the word rather than the meaning.

Concept: The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is the world's inventory of extinction risk. The International Union for Conservation of Nature was founded in 1948 and is headquartered at Gland in Switzerland; it is not a United Nations body but a hybrid union of states, government agencies and non-governmental organisations, and it began compiling the Red Data Book in 1964. The list is an assessment, not a law: being listed as Endangered creates no legal protection anywhere by itself. Legal protection in India comes from the schedules of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, and restrictions on international trade come from CITES, a treaty with three Appendices. Students routinely conflate the three, and examiners exploit it. The Red List's own logic changed decisively in 1994. The pre-1994 system used descriptive labels — Endangered, Vulnerable, Rare, Indeterminate, Insufficiently Known — that different assessors applied differently. The replacement system, refined into version 3.1 in 2001, defines each threatened category by numerical thresholds under five criteria, so that two assessors working on the same data should reach the same answer. Nine categories now exist, of which exactly three are 'threatened': Critically Endangered, Endangered and Vulnerable. Two more are commonly misread — Near Threatened means a species does not qualify for the threatened categories now but is close to doing so, and Data Deficient explicitly is not a category of threat at all, only an admission that the evidence is insufficient.

State PCS 2025 Q144 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q144 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer