Assam rhino numbers grow

In 2006, the Kaziranga National Park had 1,885 one-horned rhinos. The latest census in April this year by Assam Forest Department and World Wildlife Fund in April 2009 put the rhino numbers at 2,048, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Apr 19, 2009, 24:52:50 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Special protection measures, better habitat and effective policing by guards and locals have helped boost the population of the endangered one-horned rhino in Kaziranga National Park.

In 2006, the Kaziranga National Park had 1,885 one-horned rhinos. The latest census in April this year by Assam Forest Department and World Wildlife Fund in April 2009 put the rhino numbers at 2,048.

Rhinos are high on poachers’ list, but the situation has improved since the Assam forest department deployed guards and locals on the highways to protect the animal, said Dipankar Ghose, director (species) for eastern Himalayan landscape at WWF.

“Only a handful of rhinos were poached in 2008 as compared to the annual average of 20,” said S.N. Buragohain, director of Kaziranga National Park. Most rhinos were poached near the Guwahati National Highway when the animals were moving to the hills to escape the flooding Brahma-putra River during monsoon.

The overall wildlife situation in Kaziranga has improved, with better prey population and a suitable environment for the breeding of rhinos. “The elephant population here, as per the environment ministry’s census of 2007, has increased from 1,000 in 2002 to 1,940 in 2005. Similarly, population of wild boar and other animals has also increased — an indication that the habitat is better equipped for wildlife to survive,” Buragohain said.

The increase in rhino population is the only bit of good news in a year when 31 tiger deaths and 40 leopard deaths have been reported by mid-April.

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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