Extinction, Endangerment and the Red List
Chapter Thirteen
Syllabus topic 1, "Bio-diversity"
Pages 38 to 40 of 818
In one line
Extinction is the permanent loss of a species, and the categories that lead up to it are a scientific ranking that Indian law converts into a legal consequence in one provision only.
In exam wording: the International Union for Conservation of Nature classifies species by extinction risk into categories running from Least Concern through Near Threatened, Vulnerable, Endangered and Critically Endangered to Extinct in the Wild and Extinct; these categories have no direct force in Indian law, and the Indian legal consequences follow instead from listing in a Schedule to the Wild Life (Protection) Act 1972 or from a notification of a threatened species under section 38 of the Biological Diversity Act 2002.
Why the law has this at all
A statute has to know which species to protect, and it cannot list every species. So it needs a way of ranking risk. The scientific ranking is done by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and published as the Red List. Indian law does not adopt that ranking. It has its own two lists, and a species can be critically endangered on the Red List and on neither of them.
Understanding that gap is the point of this chapter.
The scientific categories, briefly
The Red List categories run: Least Concern, Near Threatened, Vulnerable, Endangered, Critically Endangered, Extinct in the Wild, and Extinct. The three middle categories, Vulnerable, Endangered and Critically Endangered, are together called threatened. A species is assigned to a category on published criteria about population size, rate of decline and area occupied.
Two terms are often confused. Extinct means no individual survives anywhere. Extinct in the wild means individuals survive only in captivity or as a naturalised population outside the historic range.
Endemic is a different idea altogether: a species found nowhere else. An endemic species is not necessarily threatened, but an endemic species that is threatened is at greater risk, because there is no population elsewhere to draw on.
The Indian legal consequences
1. Listing in a Schedule to the Wild Life (Protection) Act 1972. This is the main route. A wild animal specified in Schedules I and II may not be hunted under section 9. Section 51 punishes a contravention, with a higher penalty for a Schedule I animal. Section 61 gives the Central Government the power to alter the entries in the Schedules, so the list is executive.
2. Notification of a threatened species under section 38 of the Biological Diversity Act 2002. The Central Government may, in consultation with the State Government concerned, notify a species which is on the verge of extinction or likely to become extinct in the near future as a threatened species, prohibit or regulate its collection and take rehabilitative measures.
Extinction, Endangerment and the Red List
3. Recovery programmes. In Centre for Environmental Law, World Wide Fund for Nature-India v. Union of India, decided on 15 April 2013, the Supreme Court directed the Government and the Ministry to identify endangered species and to initiate recovery programmes for them, and observed the necessity of exclusive parliamentary legislation for the preservation and protection of endangered species.
The two lists and the gap between them
The Schedules of the 1972 Act are lists of species that may not be hunted or traded. Section 38 of the 2002 Act allows a list of species whose collection may be prohibited or regulated. Neither is the Red List, and the divergence has practical effects.
A wild medicinal plant may be assessed as Critically Endangered and be on no Indian list at all, in which case its collection is unregulated. That is the gap Module III is about.
Worked example
Take a hypothetical Himalayan orchid, assessed on the Red List as Endangered, endemic to two valleys, and collected for the medicinal plant trade. What does Indian law do?
If it is a specified plant. Section 2(27) of the Wild Life (Protection) Act 1972 defines a specified plant as one specified in Schedule III. If the orchid is there, section 17A(a) prohibits picking, uprooting, damaging, destroying, acquiring or collecting it from forest land, section 17A(b) prohibits possession, sale and transport, sections 17C and 17D require a licence to cultivate or to deal, and section 17H vests every specimen collected from forest land in the State Government.
If it is notified under section 38 of the 2002 Act. The Central Government may prohibit or regulate its collection and provide for rehabilitative measures. This is a separate route and does not depend on Schedule III.
If it is on neither. Nothing prohibits collection. The Indian Forest Act 1927 applies to removal from a reserved forest as forest produce under section 2(4) read with section 26, which is a forest offence rather than a species protection. The Biological Diversity Act 2002 requires approval or intimation before access for research or commercial utilisation under sections 3 and 7, but section 7 after 2023 exempts cultivated medicinal plants and registered AYUSH practitioners, and in any event the Act does not limit how much may be taken.
The answer. The Red List assessment has no legal effect of its own. What decides the case is whether an Indian authority has put the species on an Indian list, and if it has not, the species is protected only incidentally.
What beginners get wrong
Treating the Red List as law. It is a scientific assessment published by a non-governmental body. It is evidence of status and nothing more.
Extinction, Endangerment and the Red List
Confusing endangered with endemic. Endangered is about risk, endemic is about range. Neither implies the other.
Assuming section 38 has been widely used. The power exists; a student should not assert how often it has been exercised without checking a notification.
Quick revision
- Red List categories: Least Concern, Near Threatened, Vulnerable, Endangered, Critically Endangered, Extinct in the Wild, Extinct.
- Threatened means Vulnerable, Endangered or Critically Endangered.
- No Red List category has direct legal force in India.
- The Indian routes are the Schedules to the 1972 Act and section 38 of the 2002 Act.
- Section 61 of the 1972 Act lets the Central Government alter the Schedules.
- Centre for Environmental Law, World Wide Fund for Nature-India v. Union of India (2013) directed recovery programmes and called for exclusive legislation on endangered species.
Test yourself
1. What is the difference between "extinct" and "extinct in the wild"? Extinct means no individual of the species survives anywhere. Extinct in the wild means individuals survive only in cultivation, in captivity, or as a naturalised population outside the species' historic range.
2. Which Indian provision allows a species to be notified as threatened, and what does the notification permit? Section 38 of the Biological Diversity Act 2002. The Central Government may notify a species which is on the verge of extinction or likely to become so, prohibit or regulate its collection, and take rehabilitative measures.
3. Why can a Critically Endangered plant be lawfully collected in India? Because the Red List has no legal force, and unless the plant is a specified plant in Schedule III to the Wild Life (Protection) Act 1972 or has been notified under section 38 of the Biological Diversity Act 2002, no Indian provision prohibits its collection as such.
The rest of this subject
These notes are cut from the University's printed syllabus. Open the syllabus itself, or the past papers, for the same subject.