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UPPCS Environment Gap Sheet: IUCN Red List and Threatened Species.
UPPCS has asked 18 of these. 10 have not been asked yet. Lock the first list, then read the second: it holds what UPPCS has not used yet.
First, the concept
The IUCN (founded 1948, headquarters Gland, Switzerland) keeps the Red List of threatened species. Its categories, from worst: Extinct, Extinct in the Wild, Critically Endangered, Endangered, Vulnerable, Near Threatened, Least Concern; plus Data Deficient and Not Evaluated.
'Threatened' means the three middle ones: Critically Endangered, Endangered and Vulnerable. India's own law is the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.
Statuses change after each review, so the lines below give the status of recent years.
✅ Already asked (18)
Critically Endangered
- Great Indian Bustard · Thar desert, Rajasthan; power lines are a big threat
- Gharial · Chambal river; fish-eating crocodile
- Indian vultures (white-rumped, long-billed, slender-billed, red-headed) · Killed by the cattle painkiller diclofenac
- Hangul (Kashmir stag) · Dachigam, Jammu and Kashmir
- Siberian crane · Once wintered at Keoladeo
Endangered
- Tiger · India has about three-quarters of the world's wild tigers
- Asiatic lion · Only in Gir, Gujarat
- Asian elephant · Karnataka has the most
- Ganges river dolphin · National Aquatic Animal; almost blind
- Red panda · Sikkim's state animal; eastern Himalaya
- Lion-tailed macaque · Western Ghats; Silent Valley
- Hoolock gibbon · India's only ape; North-East
Vulnerable and others
- One-horned rhinoceros · Vulnerable; Kaziranga has the most
- Gaur, sloth bear, leopard · All Vulnerable
- Olive ridley turtle · Vulnerable; mass nesting (arribada) at Gahirmatha, Odisha
Lists, laws and comebacks
- Red Data Book · The record of threatened species; pink pages for critically endangered
- Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 · Amended in 2022; schedules cut to four
- Cheetah reintroduction · Declared extinct in India in 1952; brought from Namibia to Kuno (Madhya Pradesh) in 2022
❌ Not asked yet (10)
Items marked 'asked in other exams' have come in UPSC or other state exams, not yet in UPPCS.
🔒 10 items not asked yet
Critically Endangered: 3 · Endangered: 3 · Vulnerable and others: 3 · Lists, laws and comebacks: 1
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⚠️ Snow leopard moved from Endangered to Vulnerable in 2017. The rhino is Vulnerable, not Endangered. The cheetah came from Namibia, not South America.
'Asked' and 'not asked' are checked against every UPPCS question on this site. 'Not asked yet' does not mean it will surely come.