Environment and Ecology Mixed Practice — MCQs with Answers (Set 23)

Palm squirrel species are distinguished largely by their number of pale stripes, giving the ‘three-striped’ and ‘five-striped’ species their common names.

Indian squirrels are omnivorous, eating seeds, nuts, buds, bark, leaves, insects, flowers, grubs, and occasionally bird eggs or nestlings.

Indian squirrels are scatter-hoarders that bury nuts, seeds, and other food items in the ground to retrieve later, especially when food is scarce.

Indian squirrels build leaf nests, called ‘dreys,’ in trees, and also use tree hollows and building crevices — they do not burrow into the ground to nest.

Each Carbon Credit Certificate under CCTS represents one tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) reduced or avoided.

The Bureau of Energy Efficiency is the Administrator. A National Steering Committee oversees the scheme. The Grid Controller of India is the Registry.

A carbon tax sets the price of carbon and lets emissions vary. Cap-and-trade sets the total quantity of emissions and lets the price vary. If the permit price equalled the tax, the two would be equivalent. Government revenue arises only when permits are auctioned. Later trades between firms just move money within the private sector. India’s scheme issues carbon credit certificates that are traded in a market.

The official UPSC 2023 Series A key gives option (b). Both statements are correct, but the second does not explain the first. Carbon markets can raise public money when a government auctions emission allowances to firms. Firms can also trade allowances with each other. Markets help cut emissions by putting a price on pollution. Public revenue alone does not explain that climate role. See the official key scan, Series A, Q23. See ICAP on allowance auctions.

Sambar were introduced to Australia and New Zealand, where they are now considered invasive and affect native vegetation.

Researchers have documented 130 to 180 plant species in the Sambar’s Indian diet, reflecting its mixed grazing-and-browsing feeding style.

Sambar are the favourite prey of tigers across most of India, and sambar density is a strong predictor of tiger density in a reserve.

The Sambar Deer is crepuscular-to-nocturnal, especially where disturbed by hunting or humans, and the Malabar Civet is nocturnal. The Lion-tailed Macaque, by contrast, is diurnal — so two of the three are nocturnal or most active after sunset.

It favours lowland swamp and riparian forest in coastal districts, with cashew plantations sometimes serving as cover.

Researchers propose a lowland range from Kanyakumari through Wayanad and Coorg, to Honnavar in Karnataka.

Its last confirmed record dates to 1987. No survey between 1990 and 2014 recorded a confirmed sighting.

It is listed as Critically Endangered, with fewer than 250 mature individuals estimated to survive, if any.

It is mainly frugivorous, which is why it needs forest with fruiting trees available through the year.

It struggles to survive outside undisturbed, old-growth evergreen forest, which shrank sharply after plantation clearing began in the late 19th century.

It lives only in rainforest patches of the Western Ghats and nowhere else in the world.

IUCN launched the Red List in 1964, and it has since become the world’s most comprehensive inventory of species’ global conservation status.

IUCN has seven commissions. They cover species survival, protected areas, ecosystem management, environmental law, education and communication, environmental, economic and social policy, and climate action. The Climate Action Commission was earlier called the Climate Crisis Commission. It was renamed at the 2025 World Conservation Congress.

IUCN was founded in 1948 in Fontainebleau, France, originally as the International Union for the Protection of Nature.

The Invasive Species Specialist Group (ISSG), which maintains the Global Invasive Species Database, operates under IUCN’s Species Survival Commission (SSC) — not UNEP, the WCED (the ‘Brundtland Commission’), or WWF.