Guwahati, April 5: Manas today sighted another tiny tot — a female rhino calf born to Manasi — two days after the park lost an adult, the mother of a 10-day-old, to poachers.
This is the fourth rhino birth in under a month and Manas is on cloud nine. But security conditions continue to be a grave worry, officials said.
Manasi, nicknamed Ganga, was rescued during the 2004 floods in Kaziranga when she got separated from her mother. She was about four months old then. She was hand-raised at the Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation (CWRC) and shifted to a pre-release site at Manas in 2007. She was released from a boma (fenced enclosure) in 2008. She is now nine years and four months old. “Today she was sighted with a newborn female baby. The calf is about three days old,” Rathin Barman, Coordinator, Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), told The Telegraph.
This is the first rehabilitated rhino to bear a calf. Officials involved in monitoring said Manasi had mated with a wild rhino translocated from Pobitora wildlife sanctuary under Indian Rhino Vision 2020. Manasi is one of the five rhinos (three females and two males), which have been brought to Manas from Kaziranga under the WTI’s rehabilitation programme. While all the three females have been released, the two males are still in bomas.
Forest minister Rakibul Hussain today said there was a time when Manas did not have a single rhino. “The park now has more than 20 rhinos because of constant conservation work by the field staff and other forest department officials. But such positive developments are often overlooked, demotivating forest staff.”
The minister appealed to all members of the Assembly to extend a helping hand instead of criticising his department at the drop of a hat since rhino poaching has turned into an international racket. He said militants are involved in the poaching.
Barman, who is also in-charge of CWRC, said, “Today is the happiest day here. From rescue to release, throughout the past nine years, we have been waiting for this news. Our protocol for rhino rehabilitation has now become a proven document.”
Rejoicing over the latest birth, chief wildlife warden of Assam, Suresh Chand, told this correspondent, “This shows that rhinos, whether translocated or rehabilitated, have adapted nicely at Manas, which has resulted in breeding. But it is also equally true that security conditions are a point of worry. Steps are being taken to improve it.”
Officials working in the field said the situation was “not at all good” as there were elements out in the open to discredit the achievements by their illegal acts. “We should be able to provide the wildlife a secure habitat and environment,” an official said.
Dipankar Ghose, director of the Species and Landscapes Programme of WWF-India said monitoring, patrolling, intelligence and protection regimes needed to be strengthened in Manas and implemented on ground in a time-bound and verifiable manner.
