Another rhino carcass found in Jaldapara .... After 4-year lull, poachers kill Jaldapara rhino

ENS, Kolkata | August 17, 2014: After a lull lasting four years, an alleged case of poaching has been reported from Jaldapara National Park in North Bengal, where the carcass of adult male rhino minus its horn was found, officials said Saturday.
“It is a fresh carcass and the horn is missing”, state chief wildlife warden Ujjwal Bhattacharya said, adding it was recovered Friday evening. He dubbed it as “matter of concern”.
Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (PCCF), N C Bahuguna said he has reached north Bengal and will soon inspect the spot. However, Vipin Sood, conservator of forest (wild life) of north Bengal, who visited the spot today, said, “The male rhino was aged between 25 to 30 years and its horn was cut off. It is an incident of poaching.”
He said the carcass has been sent for an autopsy, which will also help ascertain if the animal was shot dead before its horn was sawed off or if it died of bleeding after losing its horn. An inquiry into the incident will be ordered after the postmortem report is received.
The last incident of rhino poaching was recorded in the Jaldapara National Park in 2010.
According to the state forest department’s annual report for 2012, the Jaldapara sanctuary had 75 rhinos in 1969. However, over the next two decades, the numbers dropped drastically, till only 14 were left in 1986. It forced a group of senior forest officers in Kolkata and Jaldapara to devise a survival strategy to save the animal. They formed several Eco Development Committees (EDC) comprising residents of the villages located on the fringes of the sanctuary. These committees were assigned the duty to patrol the forest and to collect information about the poachers. The experiment worked and over the years, the rhino population went up. In May 2012, the sanctuary was declared a national park.
A rhino census conducted in in February, 2013 recorded a phenomenal growth in the rhino population.
The census report reveals that the Jaldapara Park has at least 186 rhinos — 62 males, 55 females, 23 sub-adults, 42 cubs and four others whose sex could not be determined. Forest officers say the actual number might have crossed 190, up from 149 rhinos reported in the 2011 census.
Pinak Priya Bhattacharya, TNN | Aug 16, 2014, JALPAIGURI: Foresters at Jaldapara National Park on Friday recovered the carcass of an adult male rhino from the north range.

Sources said its horn was missing. This is the second rhino carcass recovered from Jaldapara in the last 72 hours.

Primary examination of the carcass revealed that it died at least a fortnight ago. By the time patrolling parties traced the carcass, the horn was chopped off, probably by locals, who often allegedly assist poachers.

"Prima facie it seems that it is the handiwork of poachers. However, we cannot ascertain the cause of death unless we get the autopsy report," said Tapas Das, conservator of forests, northern circle, wildlife.

Earlier in April, the horn of a rhino was chopped off its body after the animal had died of infighting.

"That rhino did not have any horn and secondly it was already aged. So that can be a case of natural death. But this one seems to be a case of poaching," he added. Incidents of poaching are not new in Jaldapara. Nearly 70 rhinos have been poached in the park in different times from 1951. It was the maximum between 1968 and 1972 when as many as 28 rhinos were poached.

In October 2009, a gang of hunters shot and injured a rhino, which escaped out of the forest only to be confronted by villagers armed with stones and sticks. The frightened animal fell into the Torsha river and died a couple of days later.

In June 2011, a poaching bid was foiled at Jaldapara after foresters on patrol located the poachers and chased them out of the forest. In March this year, an adult tusker was killed and later the tusks were taken away by poachers, who had probably sneaked in from the north east. This was the fifth case of elephant poaching in north Bengal over the past couple of years.

Jaldapara is one among four forest tracts in India where the one-horned rhinos can be found in the wild. The others are Assam's Kaziranga and Manas national parks and West Bengal's Gorumara National Park. Rhinos can also be seen in the Terai region of Nepal. There are about 3,000 Indian rhinos in the wild, half of them in Kaziranga alone. Jaldapara has around 160 animals and attracts thousands of tourists every year.