A four-month-old Ganga had lost her mother to surging waters of the Brahmaputra nearly two decades back, but she has now found her home on the banks of another river and is a healthy mother of four young ones.
Orphaned by the floods in Assam's famed Kaziranga National Park, Ganga had found a refuge on the periphery of the Park where she was raised before setting out to live on her own in her natural habitat.
Ganga was the second rhino to be rescued by the Center for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation (CWRC) in Kaziranga in 2003, along with another rhino calf, Rathin Barman of Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) told PTI. Hand-raised by the staff of the CWRC, the pair was translocated to Manas National Park (MNP), about 300 km away from their birthplace, four years later where they have thrived over the years. Named Ganga-Jamuna for their bonding by the frontline staff of MNP, they were the second lot of rhinos sent to the Park with the first being Mainou (Lakhsmi in local Bodo language) preceding them by a year to Manas, also from the CWRC.
While Ganga gave birth to her fourth calf in the last week of July this year, Jamuna has three calves of her own and Mainou had also become mother to three calves over the years before dying of natural causes a couple of years back, Barman said.
The Center was established by Government of Assam, Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) and International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), with the support of Government of India, in 2002.
It is located at the periphery of the Kaziranga National Park and attends to wildlife displacements originating mainly from the Park and adjoining Dibru-Saikhowa National Park.
The Center has been engaging in rescue of wildlife that stray out of their natural habitats and rhinos of KNP have been among such animals that have found a new lease of life in its premise.