Biodiversity and wildlife law in India

Prelims and Mains

The law India acts under at home sorts species into schedules, and which schedule an animal sits in decides what a seizure can be charged as.

• Schedule I gives the highest protection, as it does to the leopard and to every species in the seizures above.
• Schedule IV, added in 2022, brought exotic species into the Act, which is how an animal with no Indian range is covered at all.

Prelims and Mains

The Act is how India gives effect to the Convention on Biological Diversity at home, and it splits the work across three tiers, with the committee in the village at the bottom of it.

• The Biological Diversity (Amendment) Act, 2023 made most offences civil rather than criminal, and Rules followed in 2024.
• The Environment Minister has asked States to make their 2.76 lakh Biodiversity Management Committees functional rather than merely constituted.
• He also asked that People's Biodiversity Registers become dynamic planning instruments rather than one time records.
• State rules are to be aligned with the 2023 amendment and the 2024 Rules.

Background reading: PIB, 6 Sep 2026: 16th National Meet of State Biodiversity Boards and Union Territory Biodiversity Councils held at Chandigarh (opens in a new tab)

Prelims and Mains

The promise of the Act is that anyone who profits from a biological resource pays something back to the place it came from, and the National Biodiversity Authority says those payouts have now crossed ₹200 crore.

• Much of the recent money came from seed companies paying for vegetable seed bought in open markets, where no provider could be identified.
• It was shared out among State Biodiversity Boards and Union Territory Biodiversity Councils by each State's crop area, rather than reaching a community directly.
• Under Section 32(2) of the Act, a board must spend what it receives on conservation, People's Biodiversity Registers, Biodiversity Heritage Sites and community livelihoods.

Prelims and Mains

The National Board for Wildlife is the apex statutory wildlife body under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, chaired by the Prime Minister with the Environment Minister as vice chairperson. Its Standing Committee gives the wildlife clearance that any project inside a protected area needs. Such a project must pass two separate gates: environmental clearance under the Environment Impact Assessment Notification, 2006, and wildlife clearance routed through the State Board for Wildlife.

Prelims

The Central Zoo Authority is the statutory body under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 that recognises and regulates zoos in India and oversees conservation breeding in them.