Daily Quiz: UPSC Prelims Marathon (Environment) – September 12, 2020

National Highway 44 cuts through wildlife corridors connecting Kanha, Satpura, Pench, Bandhavgarh, Panna tiger reserves and at least four other protected areas.

• National Highway 6 — India’s second longest highway that runs across the breadth of the country from Surat to Kolkata — passes through corridors around Melghat, Bor, Nagzira, Simlipal tiger reserves and seven other national parks and sanctuaries.
• National Highway 37 (Assam to Manipur) – Kaziranga National Park.

As a fiery Greta Thunberg (she has Asperger syndrome, and believes her ‘neurodiversity’ has enabled her to see climate change with a different lens) called out world leaders on their actions impacting the environment — at the recently-concluded Climate Action Summit at the UN headquarters in New York — she birthed a new movement well before she arrived: flight shaming.

• Having chosen to sail to the event rather than take a flight, the 16-year-old has got everyone thinking about how leaders headlining such global events get there.
• Reportedly, it has also led to an anti-flying movement — flight shame, or flygskam in Swedish — resulting in a decline in Swedish passengers travelling by air and opting instead for low-carbon alternatives such as rail and electric-powered road travel.

A two-week long United Nations-led Conference to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) ended with a commitment to achieve land degradation neutrality by 2030. Such neutrality is defined by the U.N. as ensuring that enough land is available across the world to ensure a sustainable future.

• The Delhi Declaration, a consensus document, agreed upon by more than 100 countries “welcomed” the proposed adoption of a “voluntary” land degradation neutrality target by India, which has committed to restoring at least 26 million hectares of degraded land by 2030.
• The UNCCD is the only legally binding international agreement on land issues.
• Its 196 parties aim, through partnerships, to implement the Convention and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
• India had agreed, again on a voluntary basis, to restore 20 million hectares by 2020. Nearly 96 million hectares of land is deemed ‘degraded’ in India.

The Nilgiri Tahr (Nilgiritragus hylocrius, former name is Hemitragus hylocrius) is an endangered mountain ungulate endemic to the southern part of the Western Ghats.

• The species is found in a roughly 400 km stretch in the Western Ghats which falls in the states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
• The Eravikulam National Park has the highest density and largest surviving population of Nilgiri tahr.

“Big Four” refers to the four most common venomous snake species in India—spectacled cobra (Naja naja), saw-scaled viper (Echis carinatus), Russell’s viper (Daboia russelii) and common krait (Bungarus caeruleus).

The Indian Grey Hornbill (Ocyceros birostris) is a fairly common hornbill species found only in the Indian subcontinent.

• It is a medium-sized hornbill with a beak to tail length of about 50 cm, but one of the larger conspicuous birds we may see in our backyards.
• These birds are known to be arboreal, i.e. spend most of their time on tall trees, but may descend for food and to collect mud pellets for nesting.
• They feed on fruits and berries from fig trees, insects, reptiles (snakes, lizards), small birds (mostly fledglings) but on occasion can go after slightly bigger adult birds as well.

The Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) is a global community of more than 1000 scientists on a ten-year quest to understand the quantities, movements, forms, and origins of carbon in Earth.

• Human activity churns out up to 100 times more planet-warming carbon each year as all the volcanoes on Earth, says a decade-long study released Tuesday.
• The Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO), a 500-strong international team of scientists, released a series of papers outlining how carbon is stored, emitted and reabsorbed by natural and manmade processes.
• They found that manmade carbon dioxide emissions drastically outstrip the contribution of volcanoes — which belch out gas and are often fingered as a major climate change contributor — to current warming rates.

By comparison, the CO2 released annually by volcanoes hovers around 0.3 and 0.4 gigatonnes — roughly 100 times less than manmade emissions.

Germany’s forests have long been treasured by its people, so the country has reacted with alarm and dismay as a beetle infestation has turned climate-stressed woodlands into brown ecological graveyards.

• After two unusually hot summers in a row, vast patches of the forests mythologised by medieval fairytales, Goethe’s writings and Romantic painters have turned into tinder-dry dead zones.
• Given the scale of the threat to the one third of German territory covered by trees, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government convened a “national forest summit” on September 2019.

Nandankanan Zoological Park is a premier large zoo of India.

• Unlike other zoos in the country, Nandankanan is built right inside the forest and set in a completely natural environment.
• The animals are housed in enclosures with greenery with a feel of real forest and live with no fear or apprehension of becoming the hunter’s prey.
• Nandankanan is 15 kms from Odisha’s capital, Bhubaneswar.
• The Bhubaneswar railway station is at a distance of 18 kms and the Biju Patnaik International Airport is at a distance of 20 kms.

The use of anti-inflammatory drugs like diclofenac, nimesulides and flunixi threat to Vultures.

The Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 provides for the protection of wild animals, birds and plants; and for matters connected there with or ancillary or incidental thereto.

• It extends to the whole of India.
• It has six schedules which give varying degrees of protection.
• The blue whale falls in Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.

*NOTE: Tiger, Blackbuck, Himalayan Brown Bear, Brow-Antlered Deer, Blue whale, Common Dolphin, Cheetah, Clouded Leopard, Hornbills, Indian Gazelle, and many others comes under Schedule 1.

Crocodiles are ambush hunters and apex predator of river systems of the India.

• There are three crocodilians species found in India, Mugger crocodile, the Gharial and the Saltwater Crocodile.
• Mugger crocodile and the gharial are found throughout the Indian subcontinent and they are ambush hunters, mostly prey on fish, reptiles, birds and mammals.
• Saltwater Crocodiles are the largest species of crocodilians family and largest of all living reptiles in the world.
• The apex predator found in saline and brackish mangrove swamp forest of Bhitarkanika and Sunderbans.
• Bhitarkanika National Park in Kendrapara district of Odisha is a separates swamp region and mangroves forest.
• The park is home to largest Saltwater Crocodiles in India and many other species of reptiles such as White Crocodile, Indian Python and King Cobra.