Fourth rhino killed by poachers in Kaziranga

A rhino was gunned down today after a fierce gun battle in Kaziranga National Park in Assam, country's richest bio-diverse and world heritage site. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Feb 2, 2013, 23:57:01 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A rhino was gunned down on Saturday after a fierce gun battle in Kaziranga National Park in Assam, country's richest bio-diverse and world heritage site.

Forest officials said that the big horn animal, the fourth in a week to be killed, became victim to bullets in an exchange of fire between poachers and forest guards that lasted for over an hour.

However, poachers left behind body of the rhino which had bullet shots.

In a year or so the highly-armed poachers have killed about 25 rhinos of around 400 in the park. These killings are other than rhinos who died during two floods that hit Kaziranga in 2012.

In the last decade or do, around 115 rhinos have been poached in Kaziranga alone.

A recent alert by International Union for Conservation of Nature, a UN recognised body, said that rhino poaching and illegal horn trade in the past year was highest in over 20 years and was threatening to reverse years of conservation efforts.

The maximum killing of Rhinos with helicopter laden poachers have taken place in the African continent. In countries like South Africa, the government had to call Army to fight poachers.

Situation in Kaziranga is fast approaching similar level. Poachers may not have helicopters but are using highly specialised weaponry such as AK-47 guns to kills rhinos and combat ill-equipped and poorly trained forest department officials.

Around half of the posts of forest guards are lying empty and the weapons they use are old and outdated.

The IUCN said that conservation in Nepal and India has resulted in increased number of Rhinos and a reason for sustained attack of poachers.

Kaziranga's closeness to Myanmar makes it easy for poachers to smuggle the priceless horn out of the country, officials say.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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