Consider the following: 1) Black-necked crane 2) Cheetah 3) Flying squirrel 4) Snow leopard Which of the above are naturally found in India?

The correct answer is B. Statements 1, 3 and 4 are indigenous to India; statement 2 is not.

• Black-necked crane is a high-altitude wetland bird that breeds and winters in India, mainly on the Changthang plateau of Ladakh and in parts of Arunachal Pradesh. It is listed in Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.
• Flying squirrel is native to the forests of the Himalayas and the Western Ghats.
• Snow leopard is native to the high Himalayas, including Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh.
• Cheetah is not naturally found in India. It was declared extinct here in 1952, after the last recorded animals were killed in the 1940s. Cheetahs were brought from Namibia to Kuno National Park in 2022 under Project Cheetah. This is a translocation, and it happened after this exam, so the species is now present only because of human intervention.

The core concept is the difference between indigenous (native) and introduced or reintroduced species. For Mains, this links to the debate on biodiversity conservation through translocation, and whether such projects restore ecosystems or only add exotic populations.

Trap: assuming a species is native because it appears in the news or lives in a national park.