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The Bombay Natural History Society has sterilised more than 2,950 free-ranging dogs in Ladakh to protect the black-necked crane, whose chicks and nests were being attacked in alpine wetlands.
The programme has run since 2022 with the Indian Army, the Animal Husbandry Department and Ladakh's Department of Forest, Ecology and Environment.
Ladakh supports an annual breeding population of about 110-130 black-necked cranes, with roughly 20-25 breeding pairs each year.
The June 2026 annual monitoring recorded 19 breeding pairs across Ladakh's wetlands, described by BNHS as a conservative figure because not all sites could be surveyed.
Free-ranging dogs kill crane chicks and prevent adults from settling to nest, making dog population control a direct conservation measure rather than only a public-health one.
Ladakh's black-necked cranes breed in high-altitude marshes and lakes on the Indian edge of the Tibetan Plateau. The core areas named in the BNHS work are the Changthang Cold Desert Wildlife Sanctuary, the Hanle wetlands, Tso Kar, Nyoma and the Suru Valley. Globally the species occupies the high wetlands of the Tibetan Plateau across Tibet, Qinghai, Xinjiang, Gansu and Sichuan in China, wintering at lower elevations there and in Bhutan, with Arunachal Pradesh holding a small wintering population in India. Tso Kar is a designated Ramsar site and one of the species' most important breeding areas in India; Hanle is better known to most candidates as India's dark sky reserve, which makes it easy to remember as a Ladakh location.
One of India's oldest wildlife research and conservation NGOs; conducts bird and habitat research, runs the Important Bird Areas programme in India and advises on conservation policy
A high-altitude wetland complex in the Changthang region comprising the freshwater Startsapuk Tso and the hypersaline Tso Kar. It was designated a Ramsar site in December 2020, becoming India's 42nd and Ladakh's second after Tsomoriri. It is an A1 category Important Bird Area and a key staging site on the Central Asian Flyway.
One of the world's major migratory bird routes, covering 30 countries between the Arctic and the Indian Ocean. India adopted a National Action Plan for its conservation, and Ladakh's wetlands are important staging and breeding points along it.
The black-necked crane is listed in Schedule I, the highest level of protection under Indian law, carrying the strictest penalties for hunting or harm.
Dogs subsidised by human food waste prey on native wildlife across India - on cranes and other ground-nesting birds in Ladakh, on blackbuck and chinkara in western India, and on Great Indian Bustard chicks in Rajasthan. Recognising them as a subsidised predator, rather than as strays, is the conceptual point examiners look for.
GS Paper 3 > Conservation, biodiversity, human-wildlife conflict; Prelims species and protected-area pairings
General Awareness > Environment and Indian geography
A dog living outside direct human confinement, whether owned or unowned, whose numbers are sustained by human food waste - the preferred term over 'stray' in ecological literature.
A predator whose population is maintained at artificially high levels by human-supplied food, allowing it to depress prey species beyond what a natural predator could.
A wetland designated as being of international importance under the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, 1971, signed at Ramsar in Iran.
A migratory bird route spanning about 30 countries from the Arctic to the Indian Ocean, for which India has a national conservation action plan.
An IUCN Red List category for species close to qualifying as threatened, sitting just below Vulnerable.