On 26 June 2026, the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) released a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for the scientific identification and notification of threatened species by States and Union Territories, under Section 38 of the Biological Diversity Act, 2002. The SOP gives State Biodiversity Boards and UT Biodiversity Councils a uniform, transparent, step-by-step method — scientific assessment, stakeholder consultation, validation, notification, conservation planning and periodic review — for flagging species "on the verge of extinction." So far the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has notified 159 plant species and 173 animal species as threatened across 17 States and 3 UTs. The news is a clean peg for one of the most reliably examined NDA biology-and-environment clusters: what biodiversity is, why India is "megadiverse," the institutional machinery that protects it, and how the IUCN Red List grades extinction risk.
What "biodiversity" actually means
Biodiversity (biological diversity) is the variety of life on Earth, and examiners expect you to know it operates at three levels:
- Genetic diversity — variation in genes within a species (the many breeds of cattle, varieties of rice, or the gene pool of tigers). This is the raw material of adaptation and survival.
- Species diversity — the variety of different species in a region (the number and relative abundance of plants, animals and microbes).
- Ecosystem diversity — the variety of habitats and ecological processes (forests, wetlands, grasslands, mangroves, coral reefs, deserts).
Losing any one level weakens the whole. The NBA's SOP explicitly couples species notification with maintaining genetic diversity and safeguarding ecosystem services — so this single release touches all three levels. The drivers of loss listed in the release are also standard exam fodger: habitat degradation, overexploitation, pollution, invasive alien species and climate change. A handy mnemonic for biodiversity-loss drivers is HIPPO — Habitat loss, Invasive species, Pollution, Population/overexploitation, and Overharvesting/climate.
India as a "megadiverse" country and its biodiversity hotspots
The release calls India "one of the world's megadiverse countries." The term megadiverse is precise: it refers to a small group of (about 17) nations that together hold the bulk of Earth's species. India is one of them, holding a remarkable share of global biodiversity on a relatively small land area, including a large number of endemic species (found nowhere else).
Closely linked — and very frequently confused in the exam — is the idea of a biodiversity hotspot, a region that is both exceptionally rich in endemic species and seriously threatened with habitat loss (the concept was popularised by Norman Myers). Four global hotspots extend into India, and you should be able to name them:
- The Himalaya — the entire Himalayan arc.
- The Western Ghats (with Sri Lanka) — the chain running parallel to India's western coast, famous for its endemic amphibians and the Nilgiris.
- The Indo-Burma region — India's Northeast and beyond.
- Sundaland — which reaches India through the Nicobar Islands.
A frequent NDA trap: a "megadiverse country" is about overall richness, while a "hotspot" demands both high endemism and high threat. The Western Ghats and the Eastern Himalaya are India's two richest hotspot zones. Keeping these straight is exactly the kind of distinction our daily NDA current affairs sets drill week after week.
The National Biodiversity Authority and the Biological Diversity Act, 2002
The institution at the centre of this news is the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) — and its profile is squarely examinable:
- It is a statutory body (a body created by an Act of Parliament), established in 2003 under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002.
- Its headquarters is at Chennai, Tamil Nadu.
- It functions under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.
- Its core mandate is to regulate access to India's biological resources, advise the government on conservation and sustainable use, and ensure fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of those resources.
India enacted the Biological Diversity Act to give domestic effect to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) — the landmark treaty opened for signature at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, whose three objectives are conservation of biodiversity, sustainable use of its components, and fair and equitable sharing of benefits from genetic resources.
The three-tier structure
The Act sets up a neat three-tier architecture that NDA examiners love to test:
- National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) — at the national level (Chennai).
- State Biodiversity Boards (SBBs) — at the State level (and UT Biodiversity Councils for Union Territories).
- Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs) — at the local body level (panchayat / municipality), responsible for documenting local biodiversity, including the People's Biodiversity Registers.
In this SOP, all three tiers appear: the NBA issues the procedure, State Biodiversity Boards / UT Councils carry out the scientific identification, and Biodiversity Management Committees plus local communities feed in field knowledge — a textbook illustration of the structure in action.
Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) and the Nagoya Protocol
A linked, high-value concept is Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) — the principle that those who access a country's biological resources or the traditional knowledge associated with them must share the benefits fairly and equitably with the country and its communities. Internationally this is governed by the Nagoya Protocol (2010), a supplementary agreement to the CBD. The 2026 release notes that the new Biological Diversity (ABS) Regulations, 2025 give differential treatment in benefit-sharing where the resource belongs to a species notified as threatened under Section 38 — directly tying conservation status to the ABS framework.
The IUCN Red List: how extinction risk is graded
When the SOP talks about "threatened species," the global yardstick behind that language is the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, maintained by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) — and this is one of the single most-asked environment topics in NDA/CDS papers. The Red List sorts assessed species into nine categories along a gradient of extinction risk:
- Extinct (EX) — no individuals remaining.
- Extinct in the Wild (EW) — survives only in captivity / cultivation.
- Critically Endangered (CR) — extremely high risk of extinction in the wild.
- Endangered (EN) — very high risk of extinction.
- Vulnerable (VU) — high risk of extinction.
- Near Threatened (NT) — close to qualifying as threatened.
- Least Concern (LC) — widespread and abundant; lowest concern.
- Data Deficient (DD) — not enough information to assess.
- Not Evaluated (NE) — not yet assessed.
The single most testable fact: the term "threatened" is not any one category — it is the umbrella for the three categories CR + EN + VU (Critically Endangered, Endangered and Vulnerable). The order of severity, from worst to least among the threatened band, is Critically Endangered → Endangered → Vulnerable. Species are placed using objective criteria such as rate of population decline, total population size, geographic range and fragmentation. Remember too that the IUCN Red List is a scientific assessment of risk, not a law — it carries no legal force by itself; legal protection comes from national statutes. This crossover between biology and polity is exactly the kind of layered question worth revising in our NDA general-knowledge study material.
India's legal shield: the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 and its schedules
While the IUCN Red List grades risk, India's principal legal instrument for protecting wild species is the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972. Its key features:
- It provides for the protection of wild animals, birds and plants, and for the creation of Protected Areas — National Parks, Wildlife Sanctuaries, Conservation Reserves and Community Reserves.
- It originally organised species into Schedules, with Schedule I giving the highest level of protection (the harshest penalties) to the most endangered animals such as the tiger.
- A 2022 amendment rationalised the schedules (reducing them to a smaller set, with Schedule I again carrying the greatest protection) and aligned the Act with CITES.
Two pillars of India's species-protection effort flow from this framework: Project Tiger (launched 1973, which gave rise to India's network of tiger reserves and the body NTCA) and Project Elephant (1992). Conservation icons such as the tiger, the Asiatic lion (Gir), the one-horned rhinoceros (Kaziranga) and the Great Indian Bustard recur in exam questions and are worth knowing by habitat.
IUCN Red List vs CITES vs the WPA schedules — keep them apart
A favourite NDA trap is to blur three different things. Fix the distinctions:
- IUCN Red List — a global, scientific status assessment of extinction risk (CR/EN/VU, etc.). It is advisory, not legally binding.
- CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, 1973/1975) — an international trade treaty that regulates cross-border trade in species through its Appendices I, II and III (Appendix I = the most endangered, trade essentially banned). It governs trade, not status.
- Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 Schedules — India's domestic law giving legal protection inside the country, with Schedule I as the strictest.
So a species can be Endangered on the IUCN Red List (status), listed in CITES Appendix I (trade ban), and placed in Schedule I of the WPA (Indian legal protection) — three separate systems doing three separate jobs. Untangling them is a reliable mark-earner.
Why this matters for 2026
The release also situates the SOP within current policy: it advances the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan 2024–2030 (specifically Target 4 on halting human-induced extinctions) and the global Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework — the 2022 agreement (the "30×30" deal aiming to protect 30% of land and seas by 2030). For an aspirant, the chain to memorise is clean: CBD (1992 Rio) → Biological Diversity Act, 2002 → NBA / SBB / BMC three-tier structure → Section 38 threatened-species notification → 2026 SOP. Building these factual chains, rather than memorising isolated trivia, is the method serving-officer faculty teach in the upcoming Cavalier courses in Delhi.
🎯 Practice MCQs
Q1. The National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) was established under which Act, and in which year? (a) Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, in 1972 (b) Environment Protection Act, 1986, in 1986 (c) Biological Diversity Act, 2002, in 2003 (d) Forest Conservation Act, 1980, in 1980 → (c) — the NBA, a statutory body headquartered at Chennai, was set up in 2003 under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002.
Q2. In the IUCN Red List, the term "threatened" covers which set of categories? (a) Extinct, Extinct in the Wild and Critically Endangered (b) Critically Endangered, Endangered and Vulnerable (c) Vulnerable, Near Threatened and Least Concern (d) Endangered, Vulnerable and Data Deficient → (b) — "threatened" = Critically Endangered (CR) + Endangered (EN) + Vulnerable (VU).
Q3. The headquarters of the National Biodiversity Authority is located at: (a) New Delhi (b) Dehradun (c) Chennai (d) Hyderabad → (c) — the NBA is headquartered at Chennai, Tamil Nadu.
Q4. Biodiversity is generally described at three levels. Which of the following is one of them? (a) atmospheric diversity (b) genetic diversity (c) mineral diversity (d) climatic diversity → (b) — the three levels are genetic, species and ecosystem diversity.
Q5. Which of the following biodiversity hotspots reaches India through the Nicobar Islands? (a) Western Ghats (b) Indo-Burma (c) Sundaland (d) Himalaya → (c) — Sundaland extends into India via the Nicobar Islands; the four hotspots touching India are Himalaya, Western Ghats, Indo-Burma and Sundaland.
Q6. Under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, the institution at the local body level is the: (a) State Biodiversity Board (b) National Biodiversity Authority (c) Biodiversity Management Committee (d) Zoological Survey of India → (c) — the three-tier structure is NBA (national), State Biodiversity Boards (state) and Biodiversity Management Committees (local).
Q7. Which Indian law provides for National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries and uses Schedules, with Schedule I giving the highest protection? (a) Biological Diversity Act, 2002 (b) Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972 (c) Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 (d) Forest Rights Act, 2006 → (b) — the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, with Schedule I as the strictest tier.
Q8. "Access and Benefit Sharing" arising from the use of genetic resources is governed internationally by the: (a) Montreal Protocol (b) Kyoto Protocol (c) Nagoya Protocol (d) Cartagena Protocol → (c) — the Nagoya Protocol (2010), a supplementary agreement to the Convention on Biological Diversity. (The Cartagena Protocol deals with biosafety / living modified organisms.)
📋 How this gets asked (PYQ pattern)
Biodiversity is a perennial NDA/CDS environment-and-biology lane. The standard items are: the three levels of biodiversity (genetic, species, ecosystem); India as a megadiverse country and naming its biodiversity hotspots (Himalaya, Western Ghats, Indo-Burma, Sundaland/Nicobar); the IUCN Red List categories, with the high-frequency catch that "threatened" = CR + EN + VU and the worst-to-least order CR → EN → VU; and the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 with Schedule I as the strictest. Examiners also love matching the body to its level under the Biological Diversity Act (NBA–national, SBB–state, BMC–local) and distinguishing IUCN Red List (status) from CITES (trade) from WPA schedules (Indian law) — a classic "assertion–reason" or match-the-pair trap. The fresh 2026 hooks are the NBA's SOP on threatened-species notification under Section 38, the figure of 159 plant + 173 animal species notified, and the link to the NBSAP 2024–2030 and the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework — all of which fit neatly into "which body / which Act / which year" framings.
Preparing for NDA or CDS? Biodiversity, the IUCN Red List and India's conservation laws are guaranteed general-science marks and a strong SSB lecturette topic — easy once the levels, hotspots and Red List categories click into place. Track our daily NDA current affairs and train with serving-officer faculty in the upcoming Cavalier courses in Delhi.
✍️ Written by Maj Sunil Chopra — Veteran, Indian Army; co-founder & SSB mentor at The Cavalier. Reviewed by the Cavalier Faculty Desk. The Cavalier, founded by ex-Army officers, has trained NDA/CDS/SSB aspirants since 2001 (Facebook · YouTube).
Source: PIB release, 26 June 2026. Facts cross-verified.