GUWAHATI
The primitive spear has been added to the list of killers of the greater one-horned rhino in the 1,300 sq. km Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Naren Saikia, a resident of Lokhorakhonia village on the periphery of the park was arrested and sent to judicial custody on November 26 for spearing a rhino that ventured into the area.
Intelligence gathered by Arun Vignesh, the Divisional Forest Officer of the Eastern Assam Wildlife Division, and his team led to the arrest of the 47-year-old man two days after he threw the spear at the rhino (Rhinoceros unicornis) around 8:30 p.m. on November 24.
Surveillance by drone and patrolling on elephant back helped locate the carcass of the animal near the Teteliguri anti-poaching camp inside the park on November 30. The post-mortem on the rhino was conducted on Friday.
The autopsy report said the female rhino, aged between 20 and 30 years, died due to deep penetration of the spear through skin and ribs on the left side of the stomach. “The horn was intact and recovered by the departmental staff for safe custody according to the standard procedure,” the park’s director, Sonali Ghosh, said.
Samples from the rhino’s carcass, collected for DNA analysis, would be sent to the Wildlife Institute of India, officials said.
Ms. Ghosh said this was the first recorded case of a rhino being killed with a spear in the 118-year-old national park. It was the second case of unnatural death for a rhino in Kaziranga this year, she added.
Poachers had struck on January 1, shooting a rhino in the park and sawing off its the horn. There was no poaching in Kaziranga in 2022.
The last rhino census, in 2022, estimated the number of the one-horned herbivore in Kaziranga at 2,613. This was 200 more than the number estimated in 2018.
