Other Species-Specific Conservation Projects

Exam questions frequently mix these up with Project Tiger — each one is a separately named, separately administered central scheme with its own species focus, so keep them distinct.

CARD — Project Elephant (1992): launched by the Ministry of Environment and Forests to protect elephants, their habitat, and migratory corridors, and to address human-elephant conflict; unlike Project Tiger, it works through designated Elephant Reserves, not a core-buffer Tiger Reserve model, and there is no statutory authority equivalent to the NTCA for elephants — it remains a centrally sponsored scheme, a distinction worth remembering.

CARD — Project Lion (Asiatic Lion, Gir): targeted at the Asiatic lion, whose only wild population survives in and around Gir National Park in Gujarat; the broader push includes proposals to establish a second wild population elsewhere (Kuno in Madhya Pradesh has been the long-discussed relocation site) to reduce the extinction risk of having the entire wild population confined to one landscape — a classic "don't put all your eggs in one basket" conservation rationale that examiners like to test.

CARD — Project Snow Leopard: launched in 2009, focused on the high-altitude Himalayan and trans-Himalayan landscape (Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh) home to the elusive snow leopard, and notable for explicitly building in local community participation in a landscape-level rather than a single-reserve conservation model.

CARD — Crocodile Conservation Project (1975): one of India's earliest species-specific projects, predating even the broader modern conservation-project era, aimed at breeding and reintroducing crocodilians — the gharial, mugger (marsh crocodile), and saltwater crocodile — into protected river and coastal habitats; the gharial remains critically endangered despite decades of captive-breeding-and-release effort.

CARD — Vulture conservation (Vulture Action Plan / breeding centres): launched after a catastrophic vulture population crash across the 1990s and 2000s traced to the veterinary drug diclofenac (used on cattle, lethal to vultures that scavenge carcasses); India banned diclofenac's veterinary use in 2006 and set up dedicated vulture breeding centres, making this a rare conservation story driven by a pharmaceutical, not a habitat, cause.

Memory hook: "Tiger has reserves and an NTCA; Elephant has reserves but no statutory authority; Lion is about one population, one place (Gir); Snow Leopard is landscape-level; Crocodile and Vulture are captive-breeding-driven." Five different conservation models, not just five different animals — that's usually what the question is actually testing.

Practice Recall: Name all 5 species-specific conservation projects covered above and the one distinguishing "model" word for each... (Answer: Project Elephant — scheme, no statutory authority; Project Lion — single population, Gir; Project Snow Leopard — landscape-level; Crocodile Conservation Project — captive-breeding; Vulture conservation — diclofenac-driven, captive-breeding.)