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Rhinos in Kaziranga caught between floods and bullets
GUWAHATI: Even as authorities in Assam’s Kaziranga National Park were counting losses from the recent floods, a female rhino and her calf succumbed to a poacher’s
GUWAHATI: Even as authorities in Assam’s Kaziranga National Park were counting losses from the recent floods, a female rhino and her calf succumbed to a poacher’s bullets on Wednesday.
In the first attack since flood waters submerged over 80% of the 1,055 sq-km park last month, poachers targeted the endangered animals at Bagori range and took away the rhino’s horn.
Floods claimed 21 other rhinos and one died after forest officials fired at it. The figure is higher than 2012 when over 600 animals, 19 rhinos and more than 500 hog deer were killed in floods.
On Thursday, another carcass of an adult rhino which had died due to drowning in floods was found in the Kohora range of the park. The animal’s horn was missing. The deaths, both due to floods and poaching, signified how Assam’s state animal is fighting a tough battle for survival inside Kaziranga, which houses more than two-thirds of the world’s one horned rhinos. “The number of rhino deaths in Kaziranga this year due to floods and poaching is worrying,” Rathin Barman, deputy director of Wildlife Trust of India said.
Rhino horns are consumed as medicine in China and other southeast Asian nations due to its perceived aphrodisiac qualities. A horn weighing 900 grams to 1 kg fetches Rs 60-70 lakhs locally and costs over Rs 1 crore abroad.
Floods are an annual feature in the park. But despite the devastation, flooding of the park is necessary to regenerate the grasslands and also to fill up the 400 water bodies located inside the park.
“Flood waters are required to sustain life in Kaziranga. But only when the situation becomes as grim as it did this year, things get out of hand,” said Barman.
Tall promises like latest technologies to end rhino poaching and stricter punishment for poachers were made by the BJP before this year’s assembly election in April. But after assuming power, chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal’s government hasn’t initiated any action to fulfil those promises.
Recovery of huge amount of unaccounted cash, tiger and deer skin sand ivory from the residence of a senior forest officer in June indicates a possible nexus between poachers, politicians and officials.
Rhinos in Kaziranga face threat of bullets from local residents, illegal immigrants who have set up homes inside the park and also from militant outfits who sell rhinos horns to buy arms.
Forest officials say lack of adequate funds, manpower crisis and old and unreliable weapons and equipment hamper anti-poaching activities. Some forest guards still use .303 rifles while poachers come with Kalashnikovs and M16 rifles.
“We are stretching ourselves to the limits to protect the rhino. But proper motivation and incentives are needed to boost morale of the forest staff,” Subasish Das, divisional forest officer of Kaziranga park said in April.
