Another one-horned rhino has been killed by the poachers in Assam’s Kaziranga National Park on Sunday. The on duty forest guards, however, managed to gun down one of the poachers and recover the horn.
This is the 18th rhino to be killed in the park, which is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Earlier this month, another rhino was killed in the park and managed to decamp with its horn.
“There was a gunshot heard from the Northern range of the park on Sunday morning. On hearing the gun shots, our guards launched an operation immediately. later they could trace a group of poachers and challenged them. There was firing from both the sides and our guards could kill one of them,” said park director MK Yadav.“The guards have also recovered the horn which they (poachers) had chopped-off from the rhino,” he said. Besides, the killing of 18 rhinos in Kaziranga, the poachers also killed two more rhinos in Assam this year-one each at Manas National Park and Pabitora Wildlife Sanctuary.
Apart from the rhinos in Kaziranga, the poachers have also killed another two rhinos in Assam this year. While one of them was killed in Manas national park, another UNESCO World Heritage Site, the other one was killed in Pabitora wildlife sanctuary.Assam had recorded a spate in killing of one-horned rhinos since 2012 and last year, poachers have killed over 40 rhinos in Assam. Most of them were killed in the highly-secured Kaziranga National Park.
The rampant killing of rhinos assumes significance, particularly in the light of Assam Government’s claims of enhancing the existing security apparatus in the State to curb the growing incidents of rhino poaching.The Assam Government had created an elite force to protect the rhinos and stop wildlife crime-Assam Forest Protection Force (AFPF) since 2012 and equipped them with sophisticated arms like AK-47. Yet, the menace of rhino killings is on unabated.
Although the Assam Government had recently floated a proposal to dehorn some of the rhinos to protect the animals from poaching, yet the proposal have drawn severe criticism from various quarters including environmentalists and conservationists and most of them had argued that the proposal amounts to cruelty and insult to the rhino, which is also Assam’s State animal.