Rescued during flood, rhino calves relocated to Kaziranga for rehab

Guwahati: Two flood-rescued male rhino calves were translocated to Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve (KNTPR) on Tuesday by the Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation, marking another milestone in the state’s long running wildlife rehabilitation attempt.The divisional forest officer of eastern Assam wildlife division, Arun Vignesh, said the one-horned rhino named Chandra, rescued in 2020 from the Kaziranga range of KNTPR, is five years old. The second rhino named Kanai, rescued in 2021 from Kuthori in Assam’s Nagaon district, is four years old. “These rhinos were rescued during the flood, both in Aug, and were taken to the CWRC centre. Now both of them have reached the stage of living independently, so we rehabilitated them immediately, and a dedicated team has been given the responsibility of manually monitoring them regularly,” the DFO said.“The park authority followed the internationally accepted conservation translocation protocol wherein... a site selection committee was constituted to look for possible locations ideally suited for the pre-release enclosures. Thereafter, the rhinos have been moved to an undisclosed pre-release enclosure, where they will be habituated to living under wild conditions before their final release to roam freely in the park,” Vignesh said.