Environment › Protected areas and habitats

Protected areas, tiger reserves and eco sensitive zones

Protected areas as places: national parks, sanctuaries, tiger, elephant and biosphere reserves, and community and conservation reserves, with their boundaries, eco sensitive zones, relocation and the clearances given for projects inside them. Prelims has asked which river flows through a park, which tiger reserve has the largest critical tiger habitat, and under which law eco sensitive zones are declared.

UPSC has asked

Prelims 2023: what changes once an area is notified a Community Reserve
Prelims 2020: where the musk deer is found in the wild
Prelims 2017: the reserve that connects the Eastern and Western Ghats
Prelims 2014: the law Eco-Sensitive Zones are declared under, and what they prohibit
Prelims 2013: the river flowing through each named national park, Kaziranga among them

Showing 1 of 7 subjects, those that changed from 16 to 31 July 2026.Show all

Border fencing in the Sundarbans

Mains

The India and Bangladesh border runs through the Sundarbans along rivers such as the Ichamati, where tigers, deer and crocodiles cross water and sandbanks, so a physical fence there is an ecological question as well as a security one.

What changed

21 Jul 2026New subjectalso in news
- The Border Security Force is studying a 90 km physical fence along the Ichamati river in the northern Sundarbans. Ecologists object that tigers, deer and crocodiles constantly cross rivers and sandbanks there, so the stretch cannot be separated ecologically from the delta.
The Hindu, 21 Jul 2026: Security meets ecology as BSF mulls fence in Sundarbans (opens in a new tab)

IUCN Red List: The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) grades how close a species is to extinction, in categories from Least Concern to Extinct.

CAMPA: The Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA), set up under the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act, 2016, which holds and releases the money paid by users of diverted forest land for afforestation elsewhere.

eco-sensitive zone: A notified belt around a national park or sanctuary where mining, polluting industry and construction are regulated or barred, by default up to 10 km out.

core area: The strictly protected inner zone of a tiger reserve, kept free of human use, with a buffer of shared use around it.

Tiger corridor: A strip of habitat linking two tiger populations, so that animals can move between reserves and breed outside their own.

MISHTI: Mangrove Initiative for Shoreline Habitats and Tangible Incomes (MISHTI), the Centre's mangrove restoration scheme for the coast.

Critical Tiger Habitat: The core area of a tiger reserve, notified under the Wild Life (Protection) Act and kept inviolate for tigers.

Anti-poaching base camp: A forest outpost inside a protected area, from which staff patrol against poachers.

Also filed elsewhere

The Hanle Dark Sky Reserve · on Chemicals, noise, light and soil pollution
Ladakh's administration notified the Hanle Dark Sky Reserve (HDSR) in December 2022, India's first and still its only one.
Mining buffers around wetland reserves · on Wetlands and Ramsar sites
A national park carries a regulated belt around it; a conservation reserve carries none, and that is the gap the Supreme Court has been closing one order at a time.
The Western Ghats Ecologically Sensitive Area · on Forests, grasslands and mountain ecosystems
A belt is drawn around one park by the Centre, but an Ecologically Sensitive Area can be drawn over a whole mountain range, and eleven years on nobody has agreed where the line falls.