Friday, 6 April 2018

Rhino census in India's Kaziranga park counts 12 more



31 March 2018

A census in India's Kaziranga National Park has counted 2,413 one-horned rhinos - up 12 from 2015.

The Unesco World Heritage Site, in Assam state, is home to two-thirds of the world's population of the species.

The census is carried out every three years.

It is an incredible conservation success story given the fact that there were only a few hundred rhinos in the 1970s, says the BBC's South Asia editor Anbarasan Ethirajan.

However, the conservation effort has not been without controversy.

The government has in recent years given the park rangers extraordinary powers to protect the animals from harm - powers usually only given to soldiers intervening in civil unrest.

About 150 rhinos have been killed for their horns since 2006, but in 2015, park guards shot dead more people than poachers killed rhinos.



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