By Syed Zarir Hussain, IANS
Guwahati : Alarm bells are ringing in wildlife circles with poachers Tuesday killing yet another rhino at Assam’s famed Kaziranga National Park, taking the number of this rare pachyderm butchered so far this year to four.
“A full grown male rhino was killed near the highway that runs along the park and its horn extracted and taken away,” said Forest and Environment Minister Rockybul Hussain.
The Assam government, unable to put a halt to rhino poaching despite increased vigil, is looking at ‘conspiracy’ angles and is considering a probe by a federal investigating agency.
“There could well be a big conspiracy behind the recent poaching of rhinos. We are bent on stopping this,” Hussain told IANS.
A female rhino at the 430 sq km Kaziranga Park had a gory end late last month after poachers brutally hacked off its horn. The bleeding rhino died after three days despite efforts by veterinarians to save it. The poachers had also killed its three-year-old calf and removed its tiny horn using an axe.
Last year, 20 rhinos were killed inside the park. That was the first time in a decade that the number of rhinos killed in a year touched the double digit figure.
As per latest figures, some 1,855 of the world’s estimated 2,700 one-horned rhinos lumber around the wilds of Kaziranga – their concentration here ironically making the giant mammals a favourite target for poachers.
“We are trying our best to check poaching and have killed several poachers and arrested a number of them in the past few months,” park warden S. N. Buragohain said.
Organised poachers kill rhinos for their horns, which many believe contain aphrodisiac qualities, besides being used as medicines for curing fever, stomach ailments and other diseases in parts of south and east Asia.
Rhino horn is also much fancied by buyers from the Middle East who turn them into handles of ornamental daggers.
Profits in the illegal rhino horn trade are staggering – it sells for up to Rs.1.5 million ($38,000) per kg in the international market after the horns are smuggled to China or sold in other clandestine Asian markets.