Protected areas: the categories

Prelims and MainsCurrent affairs on this: Protected areas, tiger reserves and eco sensitive zones

India protects habitat in a ladder of categories, and what each permits is what UPSC asks. A national park and a wildlife sanctuary are both declared by the State under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972; the difference is rights, which may continue in a sanctuary but not in a park. Conservation and community reserves, added in 2002, protect buffers and corridors without displacing use. A tiger reserve is a park or sanctuary with an inviolate core and a buffer, notified on the advice of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA). Eco sensitive zones around them come under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986. Biosphere reserves, Ramsar sites and elephant reserves are designations laid over land one of these categories protects.

• Conservation reserves sit on government land and community reserves on private or community land. Sanctuary: Section 18 states the intention and Section 26A makes the final notification; rights that continue are allowed by the Collector in consultation with the Chief Wildlife Warden; wildlife may be removed under a permit for better management (Section 29). National park: Section 35; no rights survive, grazing prohibited except for livestock used as a vehicle by an authorised person. Boundary change for either needs a National Board for Wildlife recommendation (Sections 26A(3) and 35(5)); the State legislature resolution taught in older notes was removed in 2003.
• Conservation reserve (Section 36A) and community reserve (Section 36C): inserted by the 2002 amendment, enacted as Act 16 of 2003, managed with a local committee, least restrictive. Since the 2022 amendment the Central Government may also notify a conservation reserve; the land a community reserve may sit on was not changed.
• Tiger reserve (Section 38V): the core or critical tiger habitat is kept inviolate on scientific and objective criteria and without infringing the rights of Scheduled Tribes; the buffer has regulated use. The 2006 amendment created NTCA (Section 38L).
• Eco sensitive zone: notified by the Centre under Section 3(2)(v) of the Environment (Protection) Act, extent site specific and activities graded as prohibited, regulated or permitted. The familiar 10 km figure has no statutory basis; it comes from the Wildlife Conservation Strategy 2002 and the 2011 MoEFCC guidelines, which allow a zone to be narrower or wider. The Supreme Court ordered a minimum 1 km zone on 3 June 2022 and on 26 April 2023 held a uniform rule unworkable, keeping only the ban on mining inside a park or sanctuary.
• Not in the Act: biosphere reserves (UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere programme, notified administratively), Ramsar sites (Convention designations, handled at home through the Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2017) and elephant reserves (33 across 14 States, notified by States under Project Elephant, which was merged with Project Tiger in 2023; their lack of statutory backing is a live criticism).

Mains: The categories differ in whose rights survive, so protected area policy is as much about people as about species; the 2002 reserves and the tiger reserve buffer were both attempts to protect habitat without eviction.

Further reading: Current list of protected areas in India (Wildlife Institute of India) · Conservation reserves (Wildlife Institute of India)

See also: The Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972: the schedules · Kaziranga National Park · Voluntary relocation from tiger reserves: Satkosia · Elephant corridors · Project Elephant · India's Ramsar sites