Practice: Natural Vegetation, Biodiversity and Conservation

(c) 16,548.21 sq km, or 4.84% of the state, from ISFR 2023, Volume 2, section 10.22.

Why not the others: (b) is the ISFR 2021 pair, which most material still carries; (a) is ISFR 2019. (d) is not forest cover at all — it is the land-use class "Forests" from Land Use Statistics, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare, 2021-22, a revenue category rather than a canopy measurement. Three of the four options are real official figures. Only one answers the question as asked.

(b) Recorded forest area — the legal category, land recorded as forest in government records whatever grows on it, and the Rajasthan Forest Department's own statement.

Why not the others: (a) is 4.84% (ISFR 2023) and (c) is 8.10% (Land Use Statistics, 2021-22). (d) scrub is 5,476.75 sq km, 1.60%, and ISFR does not count it as forest at all. The legal figure is roughly twice the physical one, which is the single most useful thing to know about this trio: land can be recorded as forest and carry no trees, which in a desert state is common.

(d) Fell by 83.80 sq km, the Forest Survey's own change figure for the state.

Why not the others: (a) 394 sq km is real, and it is the rise in forest AND TREE cover — the fourth-largest increase among states, and the figure that was reported at the time. Both are correct and they are not in conflict: forest cover fell, forest-and-tree cover rose, because the second adds trees outside forest. An option pairing Rajasthan with "increase" or "decrease" is right or wrong depending only on the noun in the stem. Read the noun.

(a) 223.20 sq km, seven hundredths of one per cent of the state. Very Dense Forest is canopy density of 70% and above.

Why not the others: (b) is Moderately Dense Forest (40–70%) and (c) Open Forest (10–40%), which alone is nearly three-quarters of the state's forest. (d) is scrub, below 10% canopy, which is excluded from forest cover. Rajasthan's forest is real but thin, and an answer treating "forest cover" as dense woodland has misread the category.

(d) About 77% — 12,706.14 sq km of 16,548.21 lies inside the recorded forest area (ISFR 2023, Table 10.22.5).

Why not the others: (b) 23% is the share outside it, and (c) 91% is the proportion of that outside forest which is open forest, against 67.65% inside. Legal protection and canopy density track each other, which is the strongest argument in this chapter for why the recorded forest area matters even where it looks empty.

(c) 21.76% forest cover (7,15,342.61 sq km) and 25.17% forest and tree cover (8,27,356.95 sq km), from ISFR 2023, Volume 1.

Why not the others: (a) reverses the pair. 23.59% in (b) and (d) is a third quantity altogether — India's recorded forest area, 7,75,377 sq km, as stated in India's Seventh National Report to the CBD. A legal figure slipped into a canopy question is the same trap as Q2, at national scale. Hold 21.76% against Rajasthan's 4.84%: the state carries under a quarter of the national proportion, which is a climate fact before it is a policy one.

(b) Northern dry mixed deciduous forest — 8,400.21 sq km, 38.15%, the largest single type by a wide margin.

Why not the others: (a) Dhok is second at 14.72%, (d) dry deciduous scrub third at 11.41%, and (c) desert dune scrub is only 4.59%. Rajasthan's forest is overwhelmingly dry deciduous, not desert vegetation. The classification is Champion and Seth's of 1968, and ISFR records twenty types for the state.

(a) 14.72% — 3,242.81 sq km, the second-largest type and the signature tree of the Aravalli forest. Dhok is to Rajasthan what sal is to central India.

Why not the others: (b) is the northern dry mixed deciduous share, (d) dry deciduous scrub, (c) desert dune scrub. One line in the same table is worth a mark on its own: 14.33% of what is mapped is plantation or trees outside forest, not natural formation.

(c) Under nine per cent — desert dune scrub 4.59% plus desert thorn forest 3.76%, 8.35% together.

Why not the others: The recognisably desert types describe less than a tenth of the state's forest, and every larger option here is the popular image of Rajasthan rather than its forest-type table. A state that is three-fifths desert has a forest that is mainly dry deciduous, which is exactly the counter-intuitive pairing an examiner reaches for.

(b) Anogeissus pendula, the Dhok — 49,150 thousand trees, the most numerous inside the recorded forest.

Why not the others: (a) Prosopis juliflora is the most numerous in rural (1,66,706 thousand) and urban (4,117 thousand) Rajasthan — the stem's "inside the recorded forest area" is doing all the work, and the trap is answering for the wrong place. (c) Khejri is 93,706 thousand in rural areas; (d) Palash leads the major non-timber forest produce species, 663,560 thousand plants.

(d) 1,66,706 thousand trees against Khejri's 93,706 thousand, but 3.865 million m³ of volume against Khejri's 31.564 million m³.

Why not the others: Counting stems says one thing and measuring biomass says the opposite, because the Khejri are old, large, protected trees standing in fields while juliflora is thin, young and everywhere. That single pair of rows is the strongest evidence in the chapter for a Mains answer on invasive species — a policy written from tree counts would reach the wrong conclusion. Note also what it means: the most numerous tree outside Rajasthan's forests is an invasive exotic, not an indigenous species.

(a) 216.40 sq km — six hundredths of one per cent of the state, essentially the Mount Abu massif. Nearly two-thirds of that tiny tract is under forest, the highest forest proportion of any altitude band in Rajasthan.

Why not the others: (b) is the 500–1,000 m band and (c) the 0–500 m band. (d) 342,239 sq km is the state's whole geographical area — the denominator of every percentage in this unit, and the one calculation worth being able to do in the hall.

(c) 4,352, against 2,059 the previous season — detections more than doubled in a single year (ISFR 2023, Table 10.22.11).

Why not the others: (a) is the 2022–23 season, the figure this one should be read against. (b) 1,438 is Udaipur alone in 2023–24 and (d) 646 is Pratapgarh in 2022–23 — district figures offered as state totals, which is the cheapest way to lose this mark.

(a) Udaipur — 1,438 detections, up from 443 the season before.

Why not the others: (b) Pratapgarh led in 2022–23 with 646 against Udaipur's 443, and was second in 2023–24 with 1,057 — the ranking reverses between the two seasons, so the season named in the stem decides the answer. (c) Baran barely moved, 144 to 166. (d) Jaisalmer does not register: there is nothing there to carry a fire. Fire follows forest, and Rajasthan's forest is in the southern Aravalli.

(d) 86.47% — 19,045.57 sq km sits in the "less fire prone" class.

Why not the others: (a) 0.42% (92.64 sq km) is the "extremely fire prone" class and (b) 5.90% the "moderately fire prone" class. Read this against the doubling of detections and the two are not in conflict: a small, concentrated fire-prone area in the southern hills can generate thousands of detections, while the bulk of the state's dry, open, scattered forest simply does not carry fire.

(b) 3 fully notified national parks (510.31 sq km), 26 wildlife sanctuaries (9,145.13 sq km net of overlaps) and 40 conservation reserves (1,871.83 sq km), with no community reserve anywhere on the department's list.

Why not the others: 36 conservation reserves is what several preparation books still print, and it is out of date. Five national parks is the National Portal of India's count, which adds Desert and Sariska, both of which the Forest Department itself lists as under process. Neither national-park count is wrong; they count different things, and where an option set holds both, the wording decides: notified, established or final notification points to 3, a plain count or a list naming Desert and Sariska to 5.

(c). It runs to 3,162.00 sq km across Jaisalmer and Barmer and is administered with the legal status of a sanctuary while national park status remains under process. A national park is notified in stages under section 35 of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, and the final notification comes only after rights in the land are settled.

Why not the others: (a) is what almost every list assumes, and the area in it is right even though the status is not. Desert National Park alone is more than six times the combined area of all three notified national parks, so whether it is counted decides not just the number but the entire scale of the state's national park estate. The name and the legal status have simply come apart. Its associated species is the Great Indian Bustard, the state bird.

(d) None. The department's listing carries no community-reserve category at all. Community reserves are created under section 36C, on private or community land volunteered for conservation.

Why not the others: (b) forty is the conservation-reserve count and (c) twenty-six the sanctuaries — the two categories nearest to it. Sections 36A and 36C were inserted together by the 2002 amendment, so they arrive in the Act as a pair, but only one of them is populated in Rajasthan. A negative is as testable as a positive.

(a) A proposed national park, 462.05 sq km, on the department's own "under process" list.

Why not the others: (b) is the claim in wide circulation, and it is wrong. Rajasthan's Chief Wildlife Warden briefed the National Tiger Conservation Authority that Kumbhalgarh is not an ideal tiger habitat and that its prey base needs expanding first, and no notification exists. The false claim is a proposed national park converted in retelling into a tiger reserve — one place, two claims, only one of them with a basis. Treat any option calling Kumbhalgarh a tiger reserve as wrong, and any list of six as premature.

(c) Ramgarh Vishdhari, 1,501.89 sq km in Bundi, despite being the second-newest and the least known. Its buffer of 1,019.98 sq km is more than twice its core of 481.91 — the only Rajasthan reserve built that way, and what makes it large.

Why not the others: (a) Ranthambhore has the largest core, 1,113.36 sq km — larger than three of the five reserves are in total — but a smaller overall area. The stem has to say whether it means core or total, and this is the pair on which that distinction gets set.

(d) 2007, following the creation of the NTCA in 2006 under the amended Wild Life (Protection) Act. Sariska carries the same year.

Why not the others: (a) 1973-74 is Ranthambhore's protected area notification year — it was among the first Project Tiger reserves — and both years sit in adjacent columns on NTCA's own page, more than thirty years apart. "When was Ranthambhore made a tiger reserve" therefore has two defensible answers and the stem must say which it wants. (c) 2013 is Mukundara's tiger-reserve notification year.

(b). The CTH totals 59,964.060 hectares — the 599.64 sq km core — comprising Dholpur Wildlife Sanctuary in full (20,426.11 ha, notified 28 September 2023) and 11,310.00 ha of the National Chambal Gharial Sanctuary (4,540 ha in Dholpur, 6,770 ha in Karauli), declared under section 38V.

Why not the others: the detail worth carrying into an answer is where it begins: at Gusai Ghat, where the Chambal sanctuary meets the boundary of Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve in Karauli. Dholpur–Karauli begins where Ranthambhore ends — not an isolated new reserve but an extension of an existing tiger landscape along the Chambal, which is the whole conservation argument for creating it.

(c) Baran.

Why not the others: (a) Bundi is the swap to watch. The same substitution has been used on a sanctuary — Shergarh, which is in Baran — and on this conservation reserve a year later. Baran and Bundi are both Hadoti districts and both begin with B, which is exactly why it keeps working. (b) Nagaur is Gogelav's district and (d) Jhunjhunu is Mansa Mata's. Conservation reserves are the most repeated list in this unit, and the district is always the thing being tested.

(a) 782,314 ha, 2.29% of Rajasthan, mapped at 1:50,000 by the Space Applications Centre (ISRO) and published August 2010 — 46,748 wetlands in all: 12,625 mapped at 2.25 ha and above, plus 34,123 smaller ones, mainly tanks.

Why not the others: (b) is the superseded 1998 assessment, which counted only wetlands of 56.25 ha and above and so gives less than half the area — and it is still the figure in circulation. (c) and (d) are the post-monsoon and pre-monsoon open-water spreads, not the wetland area. Give 2.29%.

(d). By area, rivers and streams — 312,570 ha, 39.95%, from just 648 wetlands. By number, tanks and ponds — 10,731 of them, holding only 19.31% of the area.

Why not the others: (a) inverts the pair exactly, which is the trap, and an easy one to fall into because tanks and ponds dominate the landscape and the folk memory. "The largest wetland category in Rajasthan" has two correct answers depending on whether the stem says area or number. Note the consequence: nearly two-thirds of the state's wetland area is river, reservoir or barrage — flowing or dammed water.

(b). Rajasthan's open water more than doubles after the monsoon and more than halves before it — the most useful pair of figures about the state's wetlands, because it says what they are: seasonal, not permanent.

Why not the others: (a) reverses the seasons, (c) pairs the atlas total with the superseded 1998 area, and (d) gives the river-and-stream and reservoir category areas. One classification oddity in the same atlas is worth holding: it records a coastal wetland in Rajasthan — 18,950 ha of intertidal mud flats — in a landlocked state. It is a saline flat placed in the coastal category by the mapping scheme, so an option saying the state has no coastal wetland category is contradicted by the atlas itself.

(c). A single protected area jointly managed by three states is unusual in India, and it is why the Chambal appears three times in this chapter — as an aquatic habitat, as half of Dholpur–Karauli Tiger Reserve, and as the state's eastern boundary.

Why not the others: (a) 3,162 sq km is Desert National Park's area and (d) 1,411.29 sq km is Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve's total. (b) drops Uttar Pradesh, which is the part of the fact being tested. The river is described as clean — fewer pollutants and high dissolved oxygen — and that is the ecological precondition for everything it holds.

(a). The survey stretch was Nagar to Pinahat, 96 km, 10–12 January 2022, part of a 195 km effort across Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. The least count of 76 is what was actually seen; the estimate of 95 is what the statistics infer. In survey work the two are never the same number, and a question offering both is testing whether you know the difference.

Why not the others: (c) 212 is the gharial figure, recorded over 242 km — and the report's own caveat is that its method suits dolphins rather than crocodilians, so that number is a relative encounter rate, not a population estimate. (d) 6,327 is India's national total from the first-ever river dolphin estimation. The Chambal holds 80 to 90 per cent of the recorded global gharial population — not India's, the world's.

(d) Khichan, in Phalodi — 54.187 ha, barely half a square kilometre. Its significance is not area but birds: Khichan is the Demoiselle Crane village, the kurjan of Rajasthani folk song, where the cranes are fed communally each winter.

Why not the others: (a) Menar, in Udaipur, is the community-conservation case — a complex of three monsoon ponds with 110 waterbird species, 67 of them migratory, protected by the villagers' own restraint. (b) Siliserh is in Alwar. And (c) Keoladeo is itself dwarfed by Sambhar's 24,000 ha, more than eight times Keoladeo and roughly forty times the three new sites combined — still India's largest inland salt lake.

(b) Keoladeo Ghana, 1 October 1981 — among India's earliest designations, and nearly nine years before Sambhar.

Why not the others: (c) is the standard error and it is everywhere: sources that pair Keoladeo with Sambhar under one year have taken Sambhar's date and given it to both. Keoladeo carries three designations at once — National Park, World Heritage Site (1985) and Ramsar site (1981) — and no other protected area in Rajasthan carries all three. (d) Siliserh is the newest of the five, one of the three designated in 2025, which is why most material still prints a count of two.

(c) February 2010.

Why not the others: all four options sit within thirteen months of each other, so there is no derivable route and this is pure recall. Anchor it to the 2010 cluster: the first state forest policy, the Rajasthan Biological Diversity Rules and the Rajasthan State Biodiversity Board all arrive in the same year, the last two under the central Biological Diversity Act, 2002. One date answers three questions.

(a) Chinkara (wild) and Camel (domestic).

Why not the others: the two-animal split is the trap — "the state animal of Rajasthan" has two defensible answers, so an option list offering both is testing whether you read the qualifier. (d) the Godawan, the Great Indian Bustard, is the state bird. Learn all five together: flower Rohida, tree Khejri, bird Godawan, wild animal Chinkara, domestic animal Camel.

(d) A biosphere reserve — and Rajasthan has no elephant reserve either. India has 18 biosphere reserves and 33 elephant reserves, as stated in the Seventh National Report to the CBD, and the state has none of either.

Why not the others: (a) Dholpur–Karauli, notified 2023; (b) three in 2025 — Menar and Khichan on 19 February, Siliserh on 7 July; (c) Keoladeo National Park, inscribed 1985 as a natural property. Rajasthan's protected-area profile is built on national parks, sanctuaries, conservation reserves and tiger reserves, and an option placing a biosphere or elephant reserve in the state is wrong on that ground alone.

(b) PRITHWI — the Project for Resilient and Integrated Terrestrial Habitats and Wildlife Valorization Initiative, announced in the Budget press note of 11 February 2026, under the Green Growth and Environmental Sustainability pillar.

Why not the others: each is a real announcement in the same budget with its own figure — (a) 10 crore plants; (c) 1.10 lakh water-harvesting structures in about 5,000 villages, ₹2,500 crore; (d) ₹31 crore, at Chittorgarh. These are budget provisions, not completed works, and none of them should be written as done. Note also where that budget puts its avian-disease centres: Bharatpur and Sambhar, the state's two great bird wetlands.

(a) 56 tigers, stated at the workshop held at Alwar on 28 June 2026 to mark eighteen years of tiger re-introduction. Sariska lost its entire tiger population in 2005, was repopulated from Ranthambhore from 2008, and is now described as a potential source population for reintroduction elsewhere.

Why not the others: (d) 58 is India's tiger reserve count and (c) 46 is what India had a decade earlier — national figures offered for a single reserve. The line worth carrying into a Mains answer is the comparison drawn at that workshop: reintroduction succeeded at Sariska and Panna and failed at Satkosia in Odisha, and the reason given was community support — not habitat, not prey base, not funding.

(a) R is precisely why A is true and not a contradiction. The two figures measure different objects, and the second is larger because trees outside forest grew by more than forest cover lost. Read the noun in the stem before choosing between "increase" and "decrease".

(d) R is true and A is false. Kumbhalgarh is on that list as a proposed NATIONAL PARK of 462.05 sq km, not as a tiger reserve — which is exactly how the false claim was manufactured. Rajasthan has five tiger reserves. Note that the state's own website is not consistent even about that: its Tiger Conservation Plan page still lists four, having never been updated after Dholpur–Karauli. Five is correct.

(b) Both are true and neither follows from the other. The national total is the fastest-moving number in the unit — 98 when India's Seventh National Report was submitted in February 2026, and 99 on the Ministry's list of 21 April 2026, the difference being Sheikha Jheel Bird Sanctuary in Uttar Pradesh. Quote either with its own source and date, but never the number with the wrong document. Rajasthan's five is unaffected either way.

(c) A is right and R is the reverse of the truth. 141.71 of those 216.40 sq km are forested — nearly two-thirds, the highest forest proportion of any altitude band in the state. Height means rain and rain means trees, which is why sub-tropical hill forest exists on the Mount Abu massif and nowhere else in Rajasthan.

(a) R is the whole reason for A. The report uses the pre-2023 framework of 33 districts, so its district-wise forest-cover and fire tables have to be quoted with that caveat attached. A district-level forest figure needs two dates, not one — the report year and the district framework it used.

(b). Option (a) swaps the two newest reserves, which is the swap an examiner would actually make — Ramgarh Vishdhari 2022 and Dholpur–Karauli 2023, one year apart. Sariska shares Ranthambhore's 2007, and both of those carry a second, much older protected area notification year — 1973-74 and 1978-79 — in the adjacent NTCA column. All-India serial numbers: 7, 11, 43, 52 and 55.

(c). Sorsan is Baran and Gogelav is Nagaur, and option (a) swaps exactly those two. Three more pairs from the same closed list belong beside these: Jorbeed Gadhewal — Bikaner, Gudha Vishnoi — Jodhpur, and Hamirgarh — Bhilwara. The conservation-reserve list is short, published and demonstrably re-used, which is what makes it the highest-return list in the unit.

(d). Option (a) is the swap that circulates most widely — Keoladeo given Sambhar's 1990. Khichan shares Menar's 19 February 2025. Note that the official list carries two date columns, a date of designation and a separate date of declaration: Menar and Khichan were declared on 4 June 2025, Siliserh on 12 December 2025. The same two-date structure as the tiger reserves, and the same risk.

(a). Ranthambhore, the third notified park, is in Sawai Madhopur, and the three notified parks come to 510.31 sq km — Ranthambhore 282.03, Mukundra Hills 199.55, Keoladeo 28.73. Keoladeo is the odd one out on every axis — no tigers, a man-made wetland, the smallest, and the only one carrying international designations — which is why it is the one most often misplaced in a match-the-following.

(b). Community reserves are section 36C, and 36A and 36C were inserted together by the 2002 amendment, to protect land around and between parks and sanctuaries without extinguishing the rights over it; the first two categories date from 1972. A tiger reserve is not a fifth category — it is declared under section 38V, through the NTCA created by the 2006 amendment, and it sits on top of parks and sanctuaries that already exist.