Barely two years after the Manas National Park of Assam regained its UNESCO World Heritage Site status, fourth one-horned rhino was poached inside the park on Wednesday, which the conservationists say, will send a wrong message to the international community involved in the rhino conservation.
The park officials said that the rhino carcass was recovered from Kahitema area under the Basbari forest range of the park.
“The poachers have killed the rhino using bullets and chopped off its horn perhaps last night,” said park officials on condition of anonymity.
“The female rhino was translocated to Manas National Park (MNP) from Kaziranga National Park (KNP) on March 12, 2012,” the officials said, adding that the rhino had given birth to a calf on March 23 this year.
While one rhino was poached in Manas in June 2011 — after it regained the World Heritage Site status, another rhino was killed in the year 2012. On January 13 this year one more rhino was killed in the park.
This is the 15th rhino poached in Assam since January this year. While 11 rhinos were poached in and around Kaziranga National Park, two rhinos were killed in Manas National Park this year (including Wednesday’s one). While one rhino was poached in the Rajiv Gandhi National Park at Orang, another rhino was poached at a sandbar of Brahmaputra river in Morigaon district.
Manas, located over 150 km away from Guwahati, was initially declared a World Heritage Site by the UNESCO in 1985.
However, the international body declared the park as World Heritage Site in Danger in 1992 after rhinos and other wildlife of the park were almost wiped out from the park due to Bodo insurgency.
It is only in June 2011, that the park got back its World Heritage Site Status by the UNESCO.
Sources in the State Forest Department further revealed that this is the 17th rhino — out of the total 22 rhinos — translocated to the Manas National Park since 2008 from Kaziranga National Park and pabitora Wildlife Sanctuary as part of the Indian Rhino Vision 2020 programme (IRV – 2020).
The IRV – 2020 is a joint programme launched by the Assam Forest Department, the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) and International Rhino Foundation (IRF) for translocation of the rhinos to the Manas National Park with an aim to increase the population of wild rhinos in Assam to 3,000 before 2020.
Another prime objective is also to secure the long-term survival of wild one-horned rhinos in the State of Assam by expanding their distribution to all the protected areas in the State.