Ten jumbos from Karnataka to help conservation at UP’s Dudhwa

New Delhi: With a new rhino area to monitor and rising man-animal conflict to control, Uttar Pradesh’s Dudhwa National Park will get ten elephants from Karnataka to deal with the situation.

According to a recent report, over 156 people were killed or injured between 2000 and 2013 due to man-animal conflict in the Dudhwa-Pilibhit area. With big cats frequently venturing out or around the buffer area which is full of villages, the forest department needed more elephants.

Situated next to the porous Indo-Nepal border, Dudhwa also has a new rhino rehabilitation centre where four rhinos were relocated. The forest department requires two elephant units for better monitoring of the new rhino area spread over 21 sq km.

The elephants will join 13 elephants already stationed at Dudhwa for patrolling and monitoring. They will cover about 2,500 km in a convoy of trucks carrying elephants and food under the supervision of vets and foresters, officials said.

“Basically the primary function is patrolling along the Indo-Nepal border where foot and jeep patrolling is next to impossible… apart from that some elephants will be shifted to buffer area where man-animal conflict is high,” Dudhwa National Park Director Sunil Choudhary said.

Choudhary and his deputy Mahaveer Kaujalagi said that keeping the warm weather in mind, they are avoiding travel during the day time.

The transfer is a goodwill gesture from the Karnataka Forest Department that had earlier this year also sent elephants to Uttarakhand, Bihar and West Bengal.

“There are over 105 elephants in eight different camps. This is the first time Karnataka is giving elephants to other states strictly to aid the states with their conservation plans,” Karnataka Forest Department Principal Chief Conservator of Forests Jayaram said.

Able to venture deep into the forests, elephants are the key for better monitoring in order to check wildlife crime, according to Dudhwa Deputy Director Mahaveer Kaujalagi.

Earlier this year, Dudhwa received its first sniffer dog.

“The new rhino area needs active monitoring and man-animal conflict has to be mitigated, all this increased pressure on the existing elephant units here. Ten more of these will help us conserve in a better manner,” said Kaujalagi.

Home to a highly diverse ecosystem at the heart of the Terai region bordering Nepal, Dudhwa has several endangered animals, including tigers, elephants, Indian rhino, leopard, barasingha (swamp deer), sloth bear and others.

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Four rhinos from Dudhwa National Park to be shifted to Dudhwa Tiger Reserve

Lakhimpur Kheri: A plan is afoot to translocate Greater Indian Rhinoceros from to Dudhwa National Park to Dudhwa Tiger Reserve.
World Wildlife Fund (WWF) country coordinator for Rhino conservation in Kaziranga national Park in Assam Amit Sharma will be leading the rhino translocation project to Dudhwa Tiger Reserve . He was in Dudhwa on Saturday to finalize the details.

Rhinos were reintroduced from Assam to Dudhwa way back in 1984 for protection of the species. Now, officials are aiming to get four rhinos from Dudhwa National Park — one male and three females — to Belraya range of Dudhwa Tiger Reserve. Belraya range has been found to be suitable for rhinos as it has enough swamps and grasslands.

Deputy director of Dudhwa Mahaveer Kaujalgi said TOI, “We are in the final stage of rhino translocation programme and everything has been decided. WWF’s Amit Sharma will arrive here for tranquilizing the rhinos and thereafter they will be shifted on trucks. The enclosure and other required infrastructure has also built in Belraya for smooth transition. The shifting of rhinos will be done between April 23 and 29.”

The drug to tranquilize the rhinos has been imported with special permission by WWF.

The Indian single-horned rhino is listed as ‘vulnerable’ in the IUCN Red List. Today, its population has dwindled to about 2,700 across India and Nepal. Indian rhino is also included in schedule-I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.

According to experts, there was a time when this giant herbivore was found in the flood plains of the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra river. However, they disappeared over time and are found in Nepal and Assam.

Dudhwa is the only place where rhinos were reintroduced in 1984. According to sources, six rhinos were captured near Pobitara Wildlife Sanctuary in Assam under the reintroduction programme. The South Sonaripur range of Dudhwa was selected for the purpose. Of these one died in Guwahati zoo and two males and three females were translocated to Dudhwa. At Dudhwa, the animals were kept in stockades and then released. Of the five animals, one female died before it could be released. The first batch of animals was released in Dudhwa in April 1984. The large male was held back until the others had settled down and released a few days later. Another female died on July 31, 1984.

With only one female and two males left, an urgent need was felt to translocate some more rhinos. It was then that the government of Nepal was approached and four young adult female rhinos were brought in exchange for 16 elephants in 1985. The rhinos captured from near Chitwan National Park in Nepal arrived in Dudhwa in April 1985. Thus, these seven rhinos, two males and five females made up the seed population.

According to a study by WWF, these herbivores are considered to be natural levelers of land and are known to help in seed dispersion of large forest trees from forested areas to grasslands.


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