Running Rhinos To The Ground

By Saumyadipta Chatterjee & Naresh Mitra

Kaziranga, Feb 5 : Imagine a six-month-old rhino calf desperately nudging his mother to wake her up from her sleep. Once, twice, thrice...the calf keeps at it, becoming tired in the process, but doesn't give up. Despite his repeated efforts, however, mama doesn't respond.

What the baby doesn't realize is that mama will never wake up again. A gang of greedy poachers has shot dead his mother for her horn.

"What does one do with these criminals except shoot them dead?," says a man in charge of protecting the flagship species of Kaziranga National Park.

The bottomline is, or at least it seems, that poachers are targeting the pachyderms in Kaziranga at their will, killing them, chopping off their horns and selling the loot to wildlife traders across international boundaries for huge wads of moolah. But just being trigger happy' is not going to help curb the poachers and save the rhinos of Kaziranga, a World Heritage Site that is home to two-thirds of the world's one-horned rhinos.

Talk to any wildlife officer deployed in protection of the rhinos, or other animals in Kaziranga, and they all say the thing that worries them most is unabated poaching of the pachyderms in the national park. "It's a million dollar trade. Rhino horns are very much in demand in South-East Asian countries, particularly China. And these poachers are indiscriminately targeting the flagship animal of Kaziranga," admits a senior forest officer.

2010 was one of the "busiest years" for the forest guards of the park. The year was witness to the killing of five rhinos, of which four took place in the Agaratoli range alone. "At the same time, we gunned down five poachers last year. Following our stepped-up operations, 10 poachers surrendered as well. Besides, we have identified 25 poachers and launched a crackdown to track them," says ranger K K Deuri.

According to sources, three-fourths of the park's eastern range border is porous and the poachers, taking advantage of this, sneak into Kaziranga with the help of locals and strike at the most opportune moment.

They kill rhinos and chop off their horns for "prospective buyers". "These poachers normally take the help of locals who have worked at the park as casual workers, especially for construction work. The topography of the park is at the fingertips of these locals. The poachers then hire sharpshooters (some of whom are from Manipur's Paite tribe) and enter the jungle in a small group, normally comprising three persons a local and two Paites or two locals and a Paite," an official said.

But what surprises Deuri is the kind of arms and ammunition these poachers use to kill rhinos. "The poachers carry .303 rifles with them. Where are they getting these guns from? It's a prohibited weapon. One cannot get it easily unless there's some sort of pilferage somewhere. But we are certain about one thing. These guns are modified at markets in Dimapur to be used by the poachers."

The nefarious design of these criminals became quite clear on December 13, 2010. "In the wee hours on that day, my men heard gunshots from a camp at Turturoni Kathoni (in Agaratoli). They laid an ambush and, around 6.45 am, spotted three poachers. They started firing when they saw us. We fired in retaliation; one poacher died on the spot and another suffered wounds in his hip. He later died, at around 8 am," Deuri said.

"When police came along with a magistrate, they found rotis, flattened rice, sugar, water, a silencer of a .303 and a horn on them. But the carcass of the rhino was not found. It was only after six days that we found it at a place about 50 metres from the encounter site," he added.

But the incident that led to Deuri's team recovering the carcass was quite moving. "We first spotted a rhino calf, alone. As a rule, a calf always moves around with its mother. We started following the calf and saw that it was nudging its mother to wake her up. The mother rhino was lying there dead, with her horn hacked. The two poachers that we had shot dead had managed to kill the animal and take away its horn. But they failed to flee," the ranger said.

The second poacher who was gunned down by Deuri and his team was identified as Naren Pegu, a Mishing, and one of the deadliest poachers in the region. "He has been the biggest catch so far. Pegu actually contributed to the making of several poachers. He was a gunrunner and a financer of such poaching attempts. According to reports, he had killed about 30 rhinos since 2006," he said.

Incidentally, Pegu was arrested, along with his accomplices, in June last year. Police had then found Rs 14 lakh on him, a source said. After coming out of jail on bail in September, he had migrated from Agaratoli to Tinsukia. "Since then, he was operating from Tinuskia," Deuri said.

The way Pegu and his likes make money from these rhino horns has also come to the fore now. According to a forest official, immediately after striking in Kaziranga, the poachers' next destination is Dimapur, where they finalize their deals for the rhino horns in some hotels. Once the deals are struck, the horns are smuggled out of the country via the Dimapur-Moreh (Manipur)-Myanmar route. "Unless the administration in Dimapur wakes up and takes some stern measures, we in Kaziranga will continue to fight a futile battle to save the rhinos," the official said.