RHINO
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Context: Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma announced on January 1 that no rhinos were poached in the state in 2022. Special DGP G P Singh posted data on Twitter that showed last year was the first since at least 2000 in which there were no incidents of rhino poaching in Assam.
Details:
Indian rhinoceros
- The Indian rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) is found only in the Brahmaputra valley, parts of North Bengal, and parts of southern Nepal.
- It has a single black horn that can grow up to 60 cm, and a tough, grey-brown hide with skin folds, which gives the animal its characteristic armour-plated look.
- The Indian rhino is listed as vulnerable (better than endangered, worse than near threatened) in the IUCN Red List; it was earlier placed in the endangered category.
- The WWF says the “recovery of the greater one-horned rhino is among the greatest conservation success stories in Asia”.
- According to the WWF, there are around 3,700 Indian rhinos in the wild today. Assam’s Kaziranga National Park (KNP) alone has 2,613 animals, according to a census carried out in March 2022. There are more than 250 other rhinos in the Orang, Pobitora, and Manas parks.
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Rhino poaching
- Rhinos have been poached for their horn, which is prized in some cultures.
- An Assam Forest Department release in 2021 said “ground rhino horn is used in traditional Chinese medicine to cure a range of ailments, from cancerto hangovers, and also as an aphrodisiac”; in Vietnam, a rhino horn is considered a status symbol.
- Due to demand in these countries, poaching pressure on rhinos is ever persistent against which one cannot let the guard
- In 2019, the Assam government constituted a Special Rhino Protection Force to keep a check on rhino poaching and related activities at Kaziranga National Park (KNP). On September 22, World Rhino Day, in 2021, almost 2,500 rhino horns were burnt publicly in Bokakhat in KNP to “bust myths about rhino horns”, and to send “a loud and clear message to the poachers and smugglers that such items have no value”.
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