Rhinoceros conservation is not easy in Assam, but sustained efforts from officials and the community to curb poaching have yielded successful results, making the northeastern state nothing less than a haven for the herbivore.
On March 26 this year, the carcass of an adult one-horned rhino was found in the Bagori Range of the 1,300 sq. km Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve (KNPTR) in Assam. Horn of the rhino was missing.
The Manas National Park and Tiger Reserve (MNPTR), spread over around 500 sq. km area about 330 km west of KNPTR, presented a similar scenario on July 31 – the horn was missing from the decomposed carcass of a rhino found in the Bansbari Range in Assam.
These incidents of suspected poaching of Assam rhinos in the two tiger reserves, both listed as UNESCO World Heritage sites since 1985, sent the Assam Forest Department officials and the Special Rhino Protection Force (SRPF) into an overdrive.
The crackdown has since netted at least 10 poachers and their abettors, and an assortment of animal body parts including rhino horns, elephant tusks, deer antlers, and tiger and leopard bones and skins have been seized. Three of these poachers confessed to having killed three rhinos at Manas, which had about 100 resident rhinos before an ethnopolitical conflict in the 1990s saw them being wiped out, their horns traded for weapons by extremists.
“We have intensified vigil to ensure that no rhino or any other animal is poached in Assam. We are trying to send the message that we have zero tolerance for wildlife crimes,” Assam’s Chief Wildlife Warden Sandeep Kumar told Village Square.
The killing of four rhinos in the two marquee habitats this year sent ripples among the guardians of Assam’s jungles. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma was disturbed by the incidents of poaching in quick succession after 2022 passed off without any incidence of rhino killing. None of the rhino-bearing areas – KNPTR, MNPTR, Orang National Park and Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary – reported any poaching in 2022, underlining the northeastern state’s focus on conservation.
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According to the rhino census 2022, Assam has 2,895 of these one-horned animals. Kaziranga has 2,613 of them, up from 2,413 in 2018, followed by Orang with 125, Pobitora with 107, and Manas with 50.
With more than 70 percent of the world’s total population of 3,700 one-horned rhinos, Kaziranga has been facing a problem of plenty. Habitat management, a greater level of protection, and the pride associated with the animal as Assam’s mascot led to the perception that Kaziranga would soon have more rhinos than it could sustain.
A rhino reintroduction programme under the Indian Rhino Vision 2020 was thus conceived, entailing sending the animal primarily from Kaziranga to Manas and other traditional rhino-bearing areas from where it had vanished. Several rhinos were translocated to Manas under this initiative which started in 2006 as a collaboration between the International Fund for Animal Welfare and the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI).
A majority of these translocated rhinos were orphans reared at the Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation at Kaziranga in Assam run by the WTI since 2002. The rhino calves at the centre are either rescued during high floods or after poachers kill their mothers.
“It all boils down to teamwork and the cooperation of the people in the vicinity, who are the stakeholders in the conservation efforts and are passionate about the rhino,” a ranger at Kaziranga National Park said.
These initiatives and others, such as the construction of highlands (mounds) within the KNPTR for animals to take refuge in during floods, coincided with a grim phase of rhino poaching. A total of 190 rhinos were killed between 2000 and 2021, with the poachers striking 16 times in 2007. The worst period for the park began with 11 rhinos killed in 2012 followed by 27 each in 2013 and 2014. The figures began dropping drastically in 2016.
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The belief that the rhino is intrinsic to the culture and image of Assam helped the Kaziranga authorities intensify the operations against poachers and hunters. In 2019, the state government constituted a Special Rhino Protection Force to add teeth to the anti-poaching units and a 22-member task force headed by the state’s Director General of Police was set up two years later to monitor crimes against wildlife.
“A major factor that has helped in conservation efforts is the support and motivation from the government, which takes every incident of poaching seriously,” the ranger at Kaziranga National Park said.
Protecting Kaziranga is not easy since it is situated on the edge of the Eastern Himalayan biodiversity hotspot, and has easy access via the Brahmaputra river to the north and the hills of Karbi Anglong district and Nagaland beyond to the south. The park is also close to Myanmar, through which most animal body parts from the northeast are smuggled out.
But the coordinated efforts of the police and forest departments have largely borne fruit barring some “aberrations” such as the poaching of the rhinos in March.
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The lead image shows a rhinoceros grazing at Kaziranga National Park in Assam. (Photo by Kakali Mukherjee)
Bapi Mazumder is a freelance writer based in Assam.
