Q.Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow : India is one of the megadiverse countries housing around 8·1 per cent of global species diversity, although its land area is only 2·4 per cent of the world's land area. Many of the species are highly threatened due to human activities like deforestation, mining and habitat fragmentation. Laws like Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 were enacted by the Government of India to preserve our biological wealth. Various conservation measures are being implemented to save the threatened species. The following bar graph shows the number of species conserved under different biodiversity conservation methods. [Bar graph 'Species Conserved under Different Biodiversity Conservation Methods': Y-axis Number of Species Conserved (0–3000); X-axis Conservation Method — National Parks 1100, Wildlife Sanctuaries 2500, Biosphere Reserves 1200, Zoological Parks 990, Botanical Gardens 1100.] Study the graph and answer the questions.
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Start your 14-day free trial to unlock the full solution →Part (a): Wildlife Sanctuaries conserve the most species (2,500) — in situ; the opposite ex situ methods are Zoological Parks and Botanical Gardens; hotspots feature high endemism/species richness and high threat.
Part (c): Sacred groves are in situ conservation sites, community-protected on religious grounds, preserving native and rare species as gene pools and refuges.
Understanding the Question
The passage highlights India's disproportionate biodiversity — roughly 8.1% of global species on just 2.4% of the world's land — and the pressures (deforestation, mining, habitat fragmentation) that threaten it. The bar graph gives the number of species conserved under five methods: National Parks (1,100), Wildlife Sanctuaries (2,500), Biosphere Reserves (1,200), Zoological Parks (990), Botanical Gardens (1,100). The sub-parts ask you to read the graph and distinguish the two fundamental conservation approaches, in situ and ex situ.
Part (a)
- Highest conserving method and its type. Reading the bar graph, Wildlife Sanctuaries have the tallest bar at 2,500 species, the highest of all five methods. Wildlife Sanctuaries are an in situ ("in place") method: the species are protected in their own natural habitat, within the ecosystem in which they evolved, so their ecological relationships, breeding and genetic diversity are maintained in the wild.
- The opposite approach and how the two differ. The methods opposite to Wildlife Sanctuaries are the ex situ methods shown in the graph — Zoological Parks (990) and Botanical Gardens (1,100). (National Parks and Biosphere Reserves, like Wildlife Sanctuaries, are in situ.) The two approaches differ fundamentally in where and how organisms are conserved:
- In situ conservation protects species inside their natural habitats along with the entire ecosystem — the food web, prey base, pollinators, water sources and seasonal cycles all stay intact. It conserves not only individual species but ecological processes and evolutionary potential. Examples: national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, biosphere reserves, sacred groves.
- Ex situ conservation takes threatened organisms out of their natural habitat and maintains them in special, controlled settings for protection and study. Examples: zoological parks, botanical gardens, seed banks, gene banks, cryopreservation and in vitro fertilisation programmes. It is a safety net — useful when a habitat is destroyed or a population crashes — but it cannot fully reproduce the complexity of a wild ecosystem.
In situ is the ideal because it preserves life in context; ex situ is the complementary backup that buys time when the natural habitat can no longer support the species.
(c)(i) Two features of biodiversity hotspots.
- Very high species richness and endemism — hotspots hold an exceptionally large number of species, including many endemic species (found nowhere else on Earth).
- High degree of threat / accelerated habitat loss — they have already lost or are rapidly losing much of their natural vegetation, so they are priority regions for urgent conservation. …
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