简体中文
India’s iconic Great One-horned Rhinos (GOHR) population has increased to 2413, up by 12 individuals, in Kaziranga National Park (KNP), a census report revealed.
The last census in 2015 estimated that there were 2,401 rhinos in the park. Forest officials involved in the count maintained that poor visibility marred the counting exercise in KNP, a UNESCO World Heritage site in the northeastern Indian state of Assam.
“The grass was tall and could not be cut due to poor weather. All the areas could not be estimated, and hence we have decided to repeat it next year," said N.K. Vasu, chief wildlife warden of Assam forest department, told the Telegraph.
Official figures released by the forest department claimed there are 1,641 adult rhinos, including 642 males and 793 females. The gender of the other 206 couldn’t be ascertained.
The count for the number of sub-adult rhinos (four to six years old) was 387, including 149 females, 116 males, and 122 unknown. There are a total of 385 calf rhinos, 230 of which are older than one year.
More than 300 government and non-profit officials were involved in the survey covering an area of 430 sq km of KNP. The forest department provided 40 elephants and 17 vehicles to the officials to reach the harsh terrains of the park.
The GOHR were found in large numbers in Pakistan, India, and Nepal, about 30 years back. Due to massive poaching and habitat loss, the number of these pachyderms plummeted to nearly 300.
In 2005, the Assam Forest Department, along with the International Rhino Foundation (IRF) and Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) India, initiated Indian Rhino Vision 2020 (IRV 2020).
The plans aims to increase the GOHR population to over 3,000 in seven protected regions of Assam. As a part of the plan, the government is trying to reduce all the threats that have plummeted the rhino population.
In the last ten years, rhinos facing the threat of poaching, violent civil conflict, and floods in the region have been shifted to safer areas of the adjacent parks. Orphan calves of poached rhinos are reared at a specially designed facility in the state and later released into the wild.
The forest department has deployed drones and equipped forest guards with sophisticated weapons to curb poaching and ensure active monitoring of GOHR in the park area. Last year, there were only two poaching cases that were reported from the protected parks.
According to wildlife experts, GOHR is one of the two most significant success stories in rhino conservation, the other one being the southern white rhino in South Africa. Recently, a rhino sub-species was wiped off the planet after the death of Sudan, a male northern white rhino.
(CGTN)
