Forest officials in India have notched up a proud first. Nine years after she was rescued from the swirling flood waters of the Brahmaputra in Kaziranga national park, Ganga has become the first hand-reared one-horned rhino in the country to give birth to a calf.
The delivery took place in the wild in Manas national park. Bhaskar Choudhury, regional head, northeast India, IFAW-WTI (International Fund for Animal Welfare-Wildlife Trust of India), is feeling as proud as a new parent. "This is the most significant news for rhinos and their rehabilitation. The success of a rehab programme depends on the species producing their offspring. We are very happy," he says. IFAW-WTI runs a programme with the Assam forest department to bring rhinos back to Manas, which lost all its rhinos to poaching in 2000.
In July 2004, a badly injured Ganga, then four months old, was rescued from Kaziranga and brought to WTI's rehab centre. The calf was in shock after being separated from its mother. "The basic challenge was to make it survive after the mother could not be found," says Choudhury. Ganga was then gently hand-reared, bottle-fed and weaned for three years, before being gradually acclimatised to the wild in Manas -- her interaction with humans almost ceased, except for periodic medical assessments.
All those efforts have now borne fruition. On Friday, Ganga's three-day-old female calf was first sighted by wildlife experts around noon. "We have been observing them for the past few hours and the calf is suckling every few minutes. Ganga too has adopted the calf. These are good signs, as the chances of rejection by hand-reared rhino mothers are more, than by those in the wild," says Choudhury.
WTI started the rhino re-introduction programme in Manas in 2006. Overall, five hand-reared and radio-collared rhinos have been introduced in Manas so far. The calf's birth is a significant development for the country, which has only 2500 one-horned rhinos now. Manas has 23, and the rest are in Kaziranga. Last year, 20 rhinos were killed by poachers in Kaziranga and this year, 13 have been killed in the first three months alone. "Our biggest worry for the calf is that it will be orphaned if its mother is targeted by poachers," adds Chowdhury. He is hopeful that the two other hand-reared female rhinos in Manas would take cue from Ganga and add to the rhino numbers soon.
