World Rhino Day: How India Saved One-Horned Rhinos Of Assam From The Brink Of Extinction

On Wednesday, September 22 on the occasion of World Rhino Day, the Assam witnessed a unique 'ceremony in which some 2,479 rhino horns, recovered and preserved by the government for the past four decades were burned publicly.

The event was held at a sporting field of Bokakhat, and the rhino horns were burned in six giant gas furnaces.

AFP

Wishing everyone a very happy World Rhino Day 2021!

Link for ¡°Ceremonial Destruction of Rhinocerous Horn¡± is given below

Witness the history in making @assamforest @kaziranga_ https://t.co/0S7NvFHZqn#WorldRhinoDay2021 #Kaziranga pic.twitter.com/uLkW5EdIvO

¡ª Kaziranga National Park & Tiger Reserve (@kaziranga_) September 22, 2021

Sending a message

According to the authorities, it is aimed at sending a message to bust the myth that rhino horns have magical properties.

AFP/ File

Of the 2,623 rhino horns reconciled (an official term for recovered or collected) by Assam¡¯s forest department between 1979 and 2021, 2,479 will be destroyed while 94 will be preserved for academic purposes at the Kaziranga National Park and 29 are associated with court cases. The remaining 21 are said to be fake horns.

¡°This is the largest public destruction of the stockpile of horns of the Greater One-Horned rhino and is aimed to propagate and reinforce the fact that rhino¡¯s horns do not have any medicinal value,¡± Assam Environment Minister Parimal Suklabaidya had said in a statement.

Under the leadership of HCM Dr.@himantabiswa,@assamforest shall be making a big myth bust on #WorldRhinoDay on Sept 22nd through the destruction of the largest stockpile of 2479 reconciled rhino horns & spread out a strong message of action by #TeamAssam against rhino poachers! pic.twitter.com/KSgLNnMa86

¡ª Parimal Suklabaidya (@ParimalSuklaba1) September 20, 2021

According to the authorities, the ash from the burning will be used to make a life-size rhino replica.

Last month, following a Gauhati High Court order, Assams Environment and Forest Department had decided to destroy rhino horns, ivory and body parts of other protected animals stored in various treasuries in different districts.

Saved from extinction

Assam is home to the one-horned rhino, a rare species that was endemic to the region but was almost wiped out from the face of the planet by the poachers, who killed them for their horns.

AFP

Rhino horns are among the most sought-after items in the global illegal wildlife trade and are used in traditional Chinese medicines.

Due to the rampant poaching, their population in the wild had dropped to a few hundred in the 1970s.

The one-horned rhinos were declared endangered in 1975, but thanks to the conservation efforts and dedicated forest officials in Assam, they made a remarkable comeback in the decades that followed.

Though the one-horned rhinos are not out of danger yet, as the population grew, it has been downgraded to ¡®vulnerable¡¯ in the 2008 Red list of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

AFP

It is the only large mammal in Asia to be downlisted from endangered to vulnerable.

According to estimates, their populations have increased to around 3,700 rhinos in northeastern India and the Terai grasslands of Nepal.

Staying ahead of the poachers

According to the last rhino census conducted in 2018, there are 2,413 one-horned rhinos in Kaziranga alone.

One of the biggest factors that helped the rhino population grow back is how the Forest Officials have managed to remain one step ahead of the poachers in Kaziranga.

AFP/ Representational Image

According to the government figures since 2017 poachers have killed 22 one-horned rhinos and 644 poachers have been arrested so far.

Nine animals were killed in 2017, seven in 2018, three in 2019, two in 2020, and one in 2021 so far.