Consider the following statements about Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve: 1. It is a World Heritage Site. 2. Its inhabitants include snow leopard, musk deer and blue sheep. Choose the correct answer using the options below:
- (a)Only 1
- (b)Only 2
- (c)1 and 2 both
- (d)Neither 1 nor 2
Correct — C, 1 and 2 both.
Statement 1 holds because the reserve's core is a World Heritage property. Nanda Devi National Park was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1988, and in 2005 the site was extended to take in Valley of Flowers National Park, listed since as "Nanda Devi and Valley of Flowers National Parks".
Statement 2 holds on UNESCO's own description of the reserve, which names the snow leopard, musk deer and blue sheep (bharal) among the endangered mammals it shelters. All three are animals of the cold, steep, high-altitude belt this reserve protects.
The idea to carry away is that the biosphere reserve and the World Heritage property sit on the same ground — the two national parks that form the reserve's core zones are the inscribed site — so 1 and 2 both stands.
- (a)Only 1 — This accepts the World Heritage point and throws out the fauna. UNESCO's account of the reserve names snow leopard, musk deer and blue sheep among the endangered mammals it shelters, so statement 2 survives intact.
It is the key to a variant that slips a species from another region into the fauna list — put the Western Ghats' Nilgiri tahr into this roster and statement 2 fails, leaving statement 1 alone.
- (b)Only 2 — This accepts the animals but denies the designation. The reserve's core zones are Nanda Devi National Park and Valley of Flowers National Park, and those two are carried together on the World Heritage List, so statement 1 stands.
It is the key to a reserve whose UNESCO recognition stops at biosphere-reserve status — the fauna sentence holds there, the heritage sentence does not.
- (d)Neither 1 nor 2 — This needs both sentences to fail, and each is separately supported: the 1988 inscription of the core national park for the first, UNESCO's species list for the second.
It is the key to a stem that pairs a wrong designation with a wrong species list — a cautious-looking choice that only pays when the question is doubly false.
A biosphere reserve is a large landscape managed in zones: a strictly protected core, a buffer around it where research and low-impact use are allowed, and a transition area where people live and work.
The designations UNESCO confers are separate instruments. World Heritage listing recognises a defined property of outstanding universal value; the Man and the Biosphere network recognises a reserve as a working model for reconciling conservation with human use.
One landscape can hold both, because the core zone of a biosphere reserve is often already a national park, and a national park is the kind of unit inscribed as natural World Heritage.
Uttarakhand's high Himalaya carries several overlapping conservation designations, and the Nanda Devi landscape is where they sit most tightly on top of one another — national park, biosphere reserve core, and World Heritage property over largely the same ground.
Reading a statement about it therefore means asking which designation the sentence is actually claiming, instead of treating "reserve", "park" and "heritage site" as one interchangeable label.
- Nanda Devi National Park was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1988.
- In 2005 the property was extended to include Valley of Flowers National Park and is listed as Nanda Devi and Valley of Flowers National Parks.
- India notified the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve in January 1988; UNESCO admitted it to the World Network of Biosphere Reserves in 2004.
- UNESCO names the reserve's core zones as Nanda Devi National Park and Valley of Flowers National Park.
- UNESCO's description lists snow leopard, Himalayan black bear, brown bear, musk deer and blue sheep (bharal) among the reserve's endangered mammals.
- UNESCO puts the reserve's area at about 640,703 hectares and gives its altitude range as roughly 1,800 m to 7,817 m.
- Nanda Devi peak, 7,816 m, is the highest mountain lying entirely within India; Kangchenjunga is higher but stands on the India-Nepal border.
- Blue sheep, or bharal, is a high-altitude Himalayan caprine and a principal prey species of the snow leopard.
The stem's two statements point at one landscape through two different UNESCO instruments, and both hold.
- Reading "biosphere reserve" and "World Heritage site" as one recognition. They are separate UNESCO instruments, and the statement is testing whichever one it names.
- Rejecting statement 1 because the heritage listing is worded around the national parks rather than the reserve. Those parks are the reserve's core zones, so the property lies inside it.
- Taking "blue sheep" for a lowland or domestic animal because of the name. Bharal is a wild caprine of the high Himalayan crags.
- Doubting musk deer here because the same species turns up in questions about Askot and Gangotri. One species can be listed for several protected areas at once.
- Choosing "Neither" as the safe move when one statement rests on a documented inscription and the other on a routine fauna list. A "both" key is a legitimate outcome.
The idea surfaces as a two-statement item like this one, or as a matching set that pairs biosphere reserves with their states — either way the demand is to attach the right designation or location to a named reserve.
It also comes the other way round, through the animals: a species is given and the question asks which protected areas it naturally occupies. That is the same knowledge read in reverse.
UKPSC_2012_PRE_PaperI_Q152012Same reserve, lighter demand. The 2012 item only asks which of four protected areas is the biosphere reserve in Uttarakhand, stopping at identification; this 2025 item assumes you can name it and moves on to what designation it carries and which animals live in it.
UPPSC_2022_PRE_GSI_Q1102022Nanda Devi again, but placed in a state-matching exercise against Manas, Sundarbans and Pachmarhi. That tests where each biosphere reserve sits; ours tests the designation the reserve holds and the species it shelters, so the same name is being examined on a different axis.
UPSC_2020_GS1_Q772020Shares the musk deer. The 2020 item runs the knowledge in reverse — given the species, pick the protected areas it naturally occupies, among them Uttarakhand's Askot and Gangotri. Ours gives the protected area and asks whether the species belong to it.
UPSC_2012_GS1_Q972012Shares the snow leopard, but at country scale: it asks whether the animal is naturally found in India at all. Ours narrows that to a single Uttarakhand reserve, so knowing the species occurs in India is not by itself enough to settle statement 2.
UPSC_2022_GS1_Q252022Same name, different subject. That item pairs Nanda Devi with a Himalayan section, testing physiography and the placement of peaks; ours never touches the peak's location and is about conservation designations and fauna of the reserve around it.
- practice — not a real PYQ
UNESCO identifies the core area of the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve as:
- (a)Nanda Devi National Park and Gangotri National Park
- (b)Nanda Devi National Park and Valley of Flowers National Park
- (c)Valley of Flowers National Park and Rajaji National Park
- (d)Nanda Devi National Park and Corbett National Park
Answerb — UNESCO's description of the reserve names Nanda Devi National Park and Valley of Flowers National Park as its core area, and those two together make up the World Heritage property.Gangotri (a), Rajaji (c) and Corbett (d) are Uttarakhand protected areas of other landscapes: the core area UNESCO records for this reserve is the two parks named in (b).
- practice — not a real PYQ
The World Heritage property was renamed 'Nanda Devi and Valley of Flowers National Parks' when the Valley of Flowers was added to it in:
- (a)1988
- (b)1997
- (c)2005
- (d)2011
Answerc — the extension that brought Valley of Flowers National Park into the property, and gave the site its present name, was made in 2005.This property's inscription record turns on two years: 1988 for the original listing of Nanda Devi National Park, and 2005 for the extension. So (a) names the earlier event rather than the renaming, and (b) and (d) match neither step.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following mammals is named by UNESCO among the endangered species sheltered by the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve?
- (a)Blue sheep (bharal)
- (b)Nilgiri tahr
- (c)Hangul (Kashmir stag)
- (d)Golden langur
Answera — blue sheep appears in UNESCO's list for this reserve alongside snow leopard, musk deer, Himalayan black bear and brown bear.Each of the others belongs to a different region: Nilgiri tahr (b) to the Western Ghats, hangul (c) to the Kashmir Himalaya, where it is associated with Dachigam, and golden langur (d) to the Assam-Bhutan foothill forests.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following correctly states the relation between the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve and the World Heritage site associated with it?
- (a)The entire biosphere reserve, buffer and transition zones included, is the inscribed World Heritage property
- (b)The reserve's two core national parks together form the inscribed World Heritage property
- (c)The World Heritage property lies wholly outside the boundary of the biosphere reserve
- (d)The biosphere reserve contains no area holding national park status
Answerb — the inscribed property is Nanda Devi National Park together with Valley of Flowers National Park, and those two are the reserve's core zones.Option (a) overstates the extent: UNESCO measures the reserve at roughly 640,703 hectares, while the inscription covers the two parks. The parks lie inside the reserve, which settles (c), and their national park status settles (d).