What is the issue?
- The latest rhinoceros census in Kaziranga reported a gain of just 12 rhinos since 2015, a jump by barely half a percent.
- Though marginal, this increase is seen as a healthy trend.
What was the concern?
- Kaziranga lost over 500 rhinos in the last 2 decades of the twentieth century.
- The situation improved from the 2000s when an average annual loss to poaching came down to single digit.
- Kaziranga reported a population of 1,855 rhinos in 2006.
- But after 2006 it suffered a setback with poaching taking huge tolls.
What is the recent healthy trend?
- Even as poaching made a comeback after 2006, Kaziranga reported the biggest jump in rhino numbers.
- Rhino population had a gain of 193 rhinos in just 3 years from 2006 to 2009.
- It increased by 353 between 2009 and 2015 period, despite worrying numbers on poaching.
- But since 2017, Kaziranga brought down the numbers on poaching and thus claims a healthy population gain.
- Kaziranga National Park (KNP) has counted 2,413 one-horned rhinos in the latest triennial population estimation.
- It comes closer to the goal of hitting the 3,000-mark in the Asian one-horned rhino population in Assam by 2020.
- Moreover among the female population now counted, a majority are breeding.
What are the reasons for improvement?
- Poaching has been brought down considerably by concerted efforts.
- A group of informers earlier used by the civil administration, to get updates on poaching operations, started turning hostile.
- In tie up with their controllers, they were apparently protecting the poachers in return for big protection money.
- This group of hostile informers have now been identified and controlled.
- It has been a practice to offer political patronage to monetise Kaziranga’s rhinos in exchange for varied electoral services.
- The ups and downs in poaching numbers, with peaks during the election times, clearly reflect this practice.
- This decade-long tradition which affected rhino population has now been done away with by the government.
What drives poaching?
- Kaziranga and its rhinos still remain very much in the grip of both commercial and political interests.
- Rhino is far easier to poach than, say, a tiger or an elephant, and far more valuable in that sense.
- A carton of horns fetches as much as a carload of tiger derivatives or tusks would.
- These factors perpetuate the interest in rhino poaching, posing a challenge for controlling them.
- This interest had in the past made it easy for local insurgent groups to strike cashless arms deals with operators in Myanmar.
What are the administrative and legal shortfalls?
- Local Population - The forest administration least consider as allies the local population, mostly tribals and Muslims.
- Violent eviction drives against encroachers are common and, at least once, led to deaths caused by police firing.
- Killing Poachers - Hundreds of alleged poachers have been gunned down and the number of poachers killed is on the rise.
- On the other hand, expressively, only two forest staffs have ever been killed by poachers since the late 1960s.
- In 2010, Assam extended legal protection against prosecution to staff who kill poachers.
- Resultantly, from a decadal count of just 17 between 2001 and 2010, the number of poachers killed raised to over 50 in the next 5 years.
- These figures clearly seem to give credibility to recurrent allegations of staged murders.
- Neighbourhood - The anti-migrant rhetoric against alleged Bangladeshis have alienated the minority population in villages around the park.
- Resultantly, rhino protection does not enjoy much goodwill in its neighbourhood.
- Winning their support over time can be the best insurance against poaching.
Source: Indian Express
