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The National Zoological Park, New Delhi held the 2nd 'Tree Walk @ NZP' together with its 11th Sunday Bird Walk on 23 August 2026, under the zoo's Citizen Science Initiative for public participation in biodiversity documentation and monitoring.
Twenty-five participants recorded 42 bird species (over 300 individual birds) and 40 tree species; the highlight was over 150 Painted Storks that reached the zoo in the second week of August 2026 and began nesting on trees around the pond.
The zoo is run under the Central Zoo Authority, the statutory body created by Section 38A of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, which recognises and regulates every zoo in India.
India's model zoo, laid out beside the Old Fort (Purana Qila) in Delhi. It was formally opened on 1 November 1959 by Punjabrao Deshmukh, then Union Minister, on a design prepared by Carl Hagenbeck of the Hamburg animal park, West Germany, whose preliminary report of March 1956 set out the waterways, roads and enclosures; Major Weinman of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) contributed the open-moated enclosure concept in place of cages. It was known simply as the Delhi Zoo until 1982, when it was given the status of National Zoological Park as the country's model zoo.
Statutory autonomous body that recognises, regulates and financially assists every zoo in India, and enforces minimum standards for animal upkeep and healthcare, captive breeding and zoo research. No zoo may operate without CZA recognition. It was set up in 1992 under Section 38A of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, inserted by the 1991 amendment that added a full chapter on zoos to the Act. It has a Chairman, ten members and a Member Secretary. The National Zoological Park has been administered directly by the CZA since September 2019.
Statutory and autonomous body performing regulatory, facilitative and advisory functions on conservation, sustainable use of biological resources and fair, equitable benefit-sharing. Created under Section 8 of the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 and brought into existence by notification on 1 October 2003. The three-tier structure it heads runs down through State Biodiversity Boards to Biodiversity Management Committees at the local body level, which maintain People's Biodiversity Registers - the documentation format that citizen-science exercises of this kind feed into.
The section that constitutes the Central Zoo Authority. Chapter IVA on zoos (Sections 38A-38J) was added by the 1991 amendment, and the Authority came into being in 1992. Recognition of a zoo by the CZA is mandatory under this chapter.
In force from 1 April 2023. It cut the Act's schedules from six to four - Schedule I for the highest protection, Schedule II for species needing comparatively lesser protection, Schedule III for protected plants, and Schedule IV for species listed in the CITES appendices whose international trade is regulated. Its main purpose was to give effect to India's CITES obligations, including registration and reporting duties for CITES-listed live specimens under Section 49M.
Received assent on 5 February 2003 and commenced from 1 October 2003. It set up the National Biodiversity Authority and the three-tier biodiversity governance structure, and gives statutory backing to local biodiversity documentation.
Citizen science is scientific data collection carried out by members of the public, working to a defined protocol and under expert guidance, so that their observations are usable as research data. In biodiversity it solves a hard problem: species presence has to be recorded repeatedly, over years and across a large area, which no small team of scientists can do alone. Volunteers supply that coverage. The NZP walks show the standard method - a fixed route walked at a fixed hour, species identified against agreed field characters (for trees, leaf shape, bark, flower, fruit and canopy structure), and every sighting written down rather than merely enjoyed. Repeated over seasons, the records become a time series that reveals whether a species is arriving earlier, breeding successfully or disappearing. The nesting record of the Painted Stork 'Ringo' over four years is exactly such a series.
Simple Analogy: One doctor cannot take the whole city's temperature every morning; a thousand households with a thermometer and one common set of instructions can.
Local documentation of species and traditional knowledge, maintained by Biodiversity Management Committees under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 - the statutory cousin of a citizen-science species list.
Zoos, botanical gardens, seed banks and gene banks conserve species away from their natural habitat; the CZA regulates the zoo arm of it, and captive breeding of endangered species is part of a recognised zoo's mandate.
The Painted Stork depends on shallow wetlands to feed. Delhi's Yamuna-side water bodies, the Okhla Bird Sanctuary and the zoo pond form one such patchwork, which is why an urban zoo can host a wild breeding colony.
GS Paper 3 > Environment > Biodiversity Conservation and Conservation Institutions
General Awareness > Environment and Institutions
General Awareness > Environment
General Awareness > Current Affairs
Conservation bodies and the Wild Life (Protection) Act schedules are asked almost every year in UPSC Prelims and in SSC General Awareness.
Conservation of a species outside its natural habitat - zoos, botanical gardens, gene and seed banks - as against in-situ conservation in national parks and sanctuaries.
A breeding pattern in which many pairs of a species nest together in a small area, typically on a group of trees beside water; Painted Storks are colonial tree-nesters.
The mandatory approval a zoo must obtain from the Central Zoo Authority before it can operate, granted against prescribed standards for animal upkeep and healthcare.