What is meant by natural vegetation and wildlife?

Natural vegetation is the plant community that grows in a region without being sown or tended by people. Wildlife means the wild animals living there: mammals, birds, reptiles, insects and aquatic creatures. Geography studies the two together because the plants of a region decide which animals can find food and shelter in it.

Why are natural vegetation and wildlife studied together?

They depend on each other. Plants are the producers at the base of every food chain, and they give animals homes and nesting sites. Animals pollinate flowers, scatter seeds and help recycle nutrients. If one is destroyed, the other soon declines, so they are always described and protected as a pair.

What are the main reasons for the decline of wildlife in India?

NCERT's Class 11 book lists six causes. Forests were exploited for industry, and land was cleared for farms, settlements, roads, mines and reservoirs. Local people lopped trees for fodder and fuelwood, cattle grazed in wild habitats, hunting and poaching killed many animals, and forest fires destroyed habitats.

What are the five types of forests in India for exams?

NCERT's Class 11 book groups India's forests into five types: tropical evergreen and semi evergreen, tropical deciduous, tropical thorn, montane, and littoral and swamp forests. Rainfall separates the first three, height above sea level shapes montane forests, and tides and salty water shape littoral and swamp forests.

Natural Vegetation and Wildlife: Class 9 Notes, Types and Conservation

Q: How can we conserve natural vegetation and wildlife?

Set aside national parks, wildlife sanctuaries and biosphere reserves. Enforce laws such as the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972. Run species projects like Project Tiger. Plant native trees through social forestry, prevent forest fires and stop poaching. Most important of all, involve local and tribal communities, who often guard forests best.

Natural vegetation and wildlife are the wild plants and wild animals of a region. The plants grow without human help, and the animals live freely among them. Climate, soil and relief decide the vegetation, and the vegetation in turn decides which animals can live there. Both are precious resources that need protection.

These notes combine two NCERT chapters: “Life on Earth” from the new Class 9 book and “Natural Vegetation” from the Class 11 book. They run from meanings and biomes to India’s forests, wildlife decline and conservation. For a wider overview of plant cover alone, see our main guide to natural vegetation: meaning, types and conservation. Every figure comes from NCERT, the Forest Survey of India or PIB.

Introduction to natural vegetation and wildlife

Start with clear definitions. Most short-answer questions in this chapter test them.

Natural vegetation: NCERT’s Class 11 book India: Physical Environment defines it as a plant community left undisturbed for a long time. Over that time, each species adjusts as fully as it can to the local climate and soil.
Planted vegetation: Crops, orchards, gardens and plantations are vegetation too, but people sow and look after them. So they are not natural vegetation.
Wildlife: NCERT’s earlier Class 8 book, Resources and Development, says wildlife includes animals, birds, insects and aquatic life forms.
Flora and fauna: Flora means the plants of a region or period. Fauna means its animals. Our page on flora and fauna compares the two terms.
Biosphere: The thin zone where land, water and air meet. The same Class 8 book notes that natural vegetation and wildlife exist only in this narrow zone.
Ecosystem: A community of living things that interact with one another and with their non-living surroundings.

How are natural vegetation and wildlife connected?

Plants and animals form one living system. Neither can last long without the other.

Plants support animals. Green plants are producers: they make food from sunlight through photosynthesis. Herbivores eat the plants, carnivores eat the herbivores, and top predators sit at the end of the chain. Plants also give animals shelter, shade and places to nest.

Animals support plants. NCERT’s new Class 9 book, Understanding Society: India and Beyond (Part II, Chapter 2, “Life on Earth”), explains this return service. Animals pollinate flowers and disperse seeds, while microorganisms recycle nutrients. Among those microorganisms, the main decomposers are bacteria and fungi, which break dead plants and animals down into simpler substances.

The same chapter uses a biome pyramid to show this structure. Producers form the wide base. Herbivores, carnivores and top predators form the narrower levels above. As you move up, the number of organisms, their total mass and the available energy all fall, because energy is lost as heat at each level.

This link is why losing a forest means losing its animals too. Our article on the importance of natural vegetation explains the other benefits plants give, from soil to water and climate.

What decides the vegetation and wildlife of a region?

NCERT’s new Class 9 book names the factors that decide which plants and animals can survive in a biome. They include temperature, the pattern of precipitation, the dominant plant species and the growth forms of vegetation.

Relief matters too. NCERT’s Class 11 book explains that temperature falls as altitude rises, so mountain vegetation changes with height. A single Himalayan slope can carry tropical forest at its foot and tundra plants near its top.

What are the types of natural vegetation in the world?

A biome is a large natural region where particular plants and animals live under a similar climate. NCERT’s new Class 9 book divides land biomes into forests, grasslands, deserts and tundra. Water-based (aquatic) biomes, it adds, cover about three-fourths of Earth’s surface.

Biome	Climate	Typical plants	Typical animals	Indian example
Tropical rainforest	Hot and wet, near the Equator	Tall trees in layers, climbers	Very rich variety of species	Andaman and Nicobar Islands, northeast India
Temperate deciduous forest	Moderate temperatures, clear seasons	Broad-leaved trees that shed leaves	Varied woodland animals	Parts of the temperate Himalaya (chinar, walnut)
Taiga	Cold, long winters	Pines, spruces, larches	Cold-adapted forest animals	Conifer belts of the Himalaya are similar
Grassland	Moderate rainfall	Grasses, few trees	Lions, elephants, giraffes (savanna)	Temperate grasslands of the Himalaya
Desert	Very little rainfall	Cacti and other water-storing plants	Camels, lizards, snakes	Thar Desert, Rann of Kutch
Tundra	Coldest; frozen ground	Mosses, lichens, small shrubs	Reindeer, arctic foxes, polar bears	Highest parts of the Himalaya

Forests

NCERT’s new Class 9 book places tropical rainforests between 23.5° N and 23.5° S. The biggest are in the Amazon Basin, the Congo Basin and Southeast Asia. Smaller ones grow in Central America, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and India’s northeastern states. Because they store so much genetic variety, the book calls them a “gene bank”. The structure of these forests is explained in our guide to the tropical rainforest.

Grasslands

Grasslands are wide open areas covered mostly by grass, with very few trees. They form where rainfall is moderate, which is too little for dense forest. Temperate grasslands such as the prairies have fertile soil and are often farmed. Tropical grasslands, or savannas, have scattered trees and support large grazing animals and their predators. See the grassland ecosystem for its food chains.

Deserts

Deserts get very little rain. They can be hot, like the Sahara, or cold, like the Gobi. Plants such as cacti store water, and animals such as camels survive heat and dryness. India’s Rann of Kutch is a salt desert that turns marshy in the monsoon. Read more about the desert ecosystem.

Tundra

The tundra is the coldest biome. Its soil stays frozen for almost the whole year, a condition called permafrost, so trees cannot grow. Only mosses, lichens and small shrubs survive. Our page on tundra vegetation shows how these plants cope.

What are the types of natural vegetation in India?

NCERT’s Class 11 book groups Indian forests into five types, based on the main vegetation and the climatic region. The table gives the exam essentials. Our guide to forest types in India explains each one in full.

Forest type	Rainfall or setting (NCERT)	Main regions	Common trees
Tropical evergreen and semi evergreen	Over 200 cm a year; mean temperature above 22 °C	Western Ghats (western slope), northeast hills, Andaman and Nicobar Islands	Rosewood, mahogany, ebony
Tropical deciduous (monsoon)	70-200 cm a year	Most widespread type across India	Teak, sal, shisham, sandalwood
Tropical thorn	Less than 50 cm a year	Semi-arid Rajasthan, Gujarat, Punjab, Haryana	Babool, ber, khejri, neem
Montane	Changes with altitude	Himalaya, Nilgiris, Western Ghats	Oak, chir pine, deodar, silver fir
Littoral and swamp	Coasts, deltas and wetlands	Sundarbans, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, east-coast deltas	Salt-tolerant mangroves

Deodar, a true cedar, is one of the most valued trees of the western Himalaya. Our page on cedar tree characteristics describes it.

How much of India is forested today? According to ISFR 2023, forest cover is 21.76% of the country’s geographical area. With tree cover outside forests added, the total reaches 25.17%. NCERT notes that India’s forest policy, adopted in 1952 and modified in 1988, aimed to bring 33 per cent of the land under forest cover.

What is the wildlife of India like?

India is one of the world’s megadiversity countries, and our biodiversity guide gives NCERT’s figures for its share of species. NCERT’s Class 11 book links this richness to India’s great variety of ecosystems.

Each vegetation type shelters its own animals. NCERT’s new Class 9 book shows the endangered Nilgiri tahr, a wild goat of the Western Ghats, and the Himalayan snowcock and yak of the high mountains. Mangrove forests, crossed by tidal creeks, shelter a wide variety of birds. The Thar Desert supports camels, lizards and snakes. NCERT says Project Elephant was launched to assist states having free-ranging populations of wild elephants. For a region-by-region list, see the flora and fauna of India.

Why is wildlife declining in India?

NCERT’s Class 11 book says human activity has disturbed animal habitats, and many species are now close to extinction. It lists these main reasons:

Industrial exploitation: Industry and new technology sped up the use of forest resources.
Land clearing: Land was cleared for agriculture, settlements, roads, mining and reservoirs.
Lopping: Local people cut branches for fodder and fuelwood and removed small timber.
Grazing: Domestic cattle grazing in forests harmed wildlife and its habitat.
Hunting and poaching: Hunting was once a sport for the elite, and commercial poaching is now widespread.
Forest fires: Fires destroy plants and the animals that depend on them.

NCERT’s earlier Class 8 book adds that animals are poached for hides, skins, nails, teeth, horns and feathers. Our page on loss of biodiversity looks at these threats worldwide.

How can we conserve natural vegetation and wildlife?

Conservation of natural vegetation and wildlife works best when government action and people’s action go together. Here is a short summary; each method has its own detailed page.

Protected areas

National parks, wildlife sanctuaries and biosphere reserves protect whole habitats, not just single species. NCERT’s Class 11 book (Reprint 2026-27) counts 107 national parks, 573 wildlife sanctuaries and 18 biosphere reserves in India. New areas are added over time, so treat these as that edition’s figures. Learn how the three differ in national park vs wildlife sanctuary vs biosphere reserve.

Laws

The Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972 protects listed species and gives legal backing to protected areas. It was amended by the Wild Life (Protection) Amendment Act, 2022, in force since 1 April 2023. The Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 controls the use of forest land for other purposes. The amendments passed by the Lok Sabha in July 2023 renamed it the Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam, 1980. See our guide to the Wildlife Protection Act 1972.

Species projects

NCERT names Project Tiger (1973) and Project Elephant (1992) as special schemes to save these animals and their habitats. Other efforts include the Crocodile Breeding Project, Project Hangul and the conservation of the Himalayan musk deer. Read about Project Tiger.

Forests and people

NCERT’s Class 11 book describes social forestry, which means planting and protecting trees on barren and community land. Communities matter just as much. The new Class 9 book recalls the Bishnoi movement of Rajasthan and the Chipko movement of Uttarakhand. It also explains the Forest Rights Act, 2006, which recognises the forest rights of traditional forest dwellers. For the full picture, read about wildlife conservation and forest conservation.