Another Rhino Poached in Kaziranga National Park, Toll Goes To 22

Guwahati, Sep 19 : Another rhino was killed for its one-horn in Kaziranga national park on Tuesday evening. The forest officials fired an attack with the poachers but they were successful in escaping with the animal horn. AK 47 and .303 rifles‘s empty cartridges have been found near the dead rhino.

Divisional Forest Officer of the park, SK Seal Sarma,  said that the officials recovered the carcass of the male rhino from Burhanpur range of Assam during a forest patrol on Wednesday morning. Only the last, poachers had killed a rhino and a rhino calf in the range.

This year, a total of 22 rhinoceroses have already been killed in Kaziranga National Park. The figure is much worse than the previous year when the poachers killed 40 rhinos in the forest areas of Assam.

Assam's Kaziranga National Park is UNESCO’s World Heritage Site.

In response to the rising number of poaching incidents in the state of Assam, the Assam Forest Protection Force (AFPF) was set up by the government. Around 200 AFPF guards are deployed in the park but this has not brought a decrease in the incidents.

In order to protest against the government’s inability to keep a check on rhino killing on Kaziranga, the All Assam Students' Union (AASU) stranded the National Highway near Kohora. They also burnt effigies of government authorities.

Horn and tusk trade

Rhino horn has been poached since time immemorial for its demand as a constituent in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and is believed to be effective in reducing high fevers and convulsions and controlling haemorrhage.