Rhino found dead inside Assam's Kaziranga with horn missing, poaching suspected

Body of a famous one-horned rhino was found floating in a waterbody inside the Kaziranga National Park in Assam with its horn missing.

Divisional forest officer Ramesh Kumar Gogoi said the body of the rhino was detected at around 4:30 pm in Bormer beel, a water body at Bagori in the park's Western range on Sunday. "There is a cut mark in the nasal bone of the rhino and the horn was taken away by miscreants. It is evidently clear that the rhino was killed by poachers about 6-7 days ago," he said.

Gogoi said operations have already been launched by police and forest guards for the poachers who killed the rhino.

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This was the first rhino poaching incident in Kaziranga since December 2021 and there was no poaching case in the park in 2022. The state forest department and police said poachers could not kill a rhino during 2022 due to several steps taken by the park. But Sunday's incident raised questions over those arrangements.

With 2,613 rhinos, Kaziranga National Park is the biggest habitat of the famous one-horned rhinos and is a Unesco World Heritage Site. Kaziranga is also one of the biggest tourist centres in the country.

With nearly 2,900 rhinos (2018 Census), Assam is the largest habitat of the prized one-horned rhinos, a vulnerable wildlife species. According to the State of the Rhinos Report 2022, the population of one-horned rhinos, found only in India, Nepal and Bhutan, reached 4,012.

But poaching in Assam's national parks and wildlife sanctuaries has remained a serious concern. Poachers having links with international gangs of wildlife parts smugglers have killed at least 191 rhinos since 2000. The year 2014 and 2015 witnessed the highest number of poaching (17 each). At least 18 rhinos were killed in 2016 and the number of poaching reduced thereafter and only one rhino was killed in 2021.