UPPSC 2024 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 10 of 150

Correct — D, A-2, B-4, C-1, D-3. Simlipal Biosphere Reserve lies in the Mayurbhanj district of Odisha (List-II 2) — designated by the Government of India in 1994 and added to UNESCO's World Network of Biosphere Reserves in May 2009; it also holds Simlipal Tiger Reserve. Nokrek Biosphere Reserve is in the Garo Hills of Meghalaya (4), designated in 1988 and on the UNESCO network since 2009. Agasthyamalai Biosphere Reserve is centred on the Agastyamalai hills of the southern Western Ghats and is matched here with Kerala (1) — it was designated in 2001 and takes in Neyyar, Peppara and Shendurney Wildlife Sanctuaries in Kerala along with the Kalakad–Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve on the Tamil Nadu side. Manas Biosphere Reserve is in Assam (3), designated in 1989 on the Bhutan border. Only option (d) puts all four in the right state.

• (a)A-1, B-2, C-4, D-3 — Gets only Manas right. It sends Simlipal to Kerala (it is in Odisha), Nokrek to Odisha (it is in Meghalaya) and Agasthyamalai to Meghalaya (it is in the far south, on the Kerala–Tamil Nadu border) — a straight three-way rotation of the northern and southern reserves.
• (b)A-3, B-1, C-4, D-2 — Every pair is wrong. Simlipal is placed in Assam, Nokrek in Kerala, Agasthyamalai in Meghalaya and Manas in Odisha — the two north-eastern reserves and the two others are completely interchanged.
• (c)A-2, B-4, C-3, D-1 — The dangerous near-miss: it gets Simlipal–Odisha and Nokrek–Meghalaya right, then swaps the last two, putting Agasthyamalai in Assam and Manas in Kerala. Manas sits on the Assam–Bhutan foothills of the eastern Himalaya, while Agasthyamalai is a southern Western Ghats reserve — the two are at opposite ends of the country.

A biosphere reserve is an internationally recognised unit of conservation created under UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme and notified in India by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. Unlike a national park, it is not a single legal category but a zoned landscape: a legally protected core zone where no human activity is permitted, a buffer zone allowing research, education and limited resource use, and a transition (manipulation) zone where settlements, farming and other economic activity continue. The core is usually an existing national park or wildlife sanctuary, so the same name often appears as a national park, a tiger reserve and a biosphere reserve at once. India has 18 biosphere reserves, 13 of which are on UNESCO's World Network.

Match-list items on biosphere reserves are pure map memory, and the reliable method is to fix the region rather than the name. Three of these four are essentially in the north and east; the odd one out is Agasthyamalai, the only southern Western Ghats reserve on the list, so it must take Kerala. Nokrek is unmistakably Garo Hills = Meghalaya. Manas is the Assam–Bhutan foothill reserve. What is left, Simlipal, goes to Odisha. Options (a) and (b) fail immediately on Agasthyamalai; option (c) survives until you test Manas, which is why the last pair is where the item is actually decided.

• Simlipal Biosphere Reserve — Mayurbhanj district, Odisha; notified by India in 1994 and added to UNESCO's World Network in May 2009; 4,374 sq km (the 2,750 sq km figure often quoted is the national park / tiger-reserve component, not the biosphere reserve), incorporating Simlipal Tiger Reserve and part of the Mayurbhanj Elephant Reserve.
• Nokrek Biosphere Reserve — Garo Hills, Meghalaya; notified 1988, UNESCO network 2009; noted for its wild citrus (Citrus indica) gene pool.
• Agasthyamalai Biosphere Reserve — southern Western Ghats, spanning Kerala and Tamil Nadu; notified 2001, UNESCO network 2016; includes Neyyar, Peppara and Shendurney Wildlife Sanctuaries and the Kalakad–Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve.
• Manas Biosphere Reserve — Assam, on the Bhutan border; notified 1989. Manas is also a tiger reserve and a UNESCO natural World Heritage Site, but the biosphere reserve itself is not among the Indian sites on UNESCO's World Network of Biosphere Reserves.
• A biosphere reserve is zoned into core, buffer and transition zones; the core alone is legally protected and free of human activity.

• Assuming every Indian biosphere reserve is on the UNESCO list — only 13 of 18 are, and Manas is one of those that is not, even though Manas is a World Heritage Site on separate grounds.
• Reading Agasthyamalai as a single-state reserve — it straddles Kerala and Tamil Nadu, and only Kerala appears in this List-II, which is why C-1 is the intended pair.
• Mixing up Simlipal (Odisha) with the similar-sounding Similipal spelling used in some papers, or with Satkosia and Bhitarkanika, which are Odisha protected areas but not biosphere reserves.

UPPSC asks biosphere reserves almost exclusively as a four-pair reserve-to-state match-list (it did the same in 2021 with Similipal, Pachmarhi, Nanda Devi and Nokrek), while UPSC prefers to test the contents of a single reserve — which sanctuaries or hills lie inside it — or the legal distinction between protected-area categories.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following pairs (Biosphere Reserve – State) is NOT correctly matched ?

  • (a)Nokrek – Meghalaya
  • (b)Dihang-Dibang – Arunachal Pradesh
  • (c)Achanakmar-Amarkantak – Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh
  • (d)Panna – Maharashtra

  Answer(d) Panna – Maharashtra is wrong; the Panna Biosphere Reserve is in Madhya Pradesh and joined UNESCO's World Network in 2020. The other three pairs are correct.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Agasthyamalai Biosphere Reserve extends over parts of which two States ?

  • (a)Kerala and Karnataka
  • (b)Karnataka and Tamil Nadu
  • (c)Kerala and Tamil Nadu
  • (d)Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh

  Answer(c) Kerala and Tamil Nadu — it covers Neyyar, Peppara and Shendurney Wildlife Sanctuaries in Kerala and the Kalakad–Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve in Tamil Nadu, and was added to UNESCO's World Network in 2016.