On the morning of August 13, 2017, when floodwaters in Assam’s Kaziranga National Park suddenly rose by several feet, a rhino calf which was swept away got stuck in vegetation near the Haldibari forest camp.
The forest guards and the team from the Wildlife Trust of India ( WTI) found that the animal’s umbilical chord was still attached and the calf was in severe trauma.
“The male rhino calf was not even a week old, may be only two or three days old. While being swept away, it luckily got stuck to the water hyacinth vegetation. The calf had to be treated for lung infection for the next seven days by administering saline. Now it is doing well,” Rathin Barman, joint director WTI, told
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That very day, three other rhino calves were rescued.
On August 14, another stranded male calf which took shelter in the backyard of a home in Na Jan village near Bagori range, was rescued. Three days later a female calf, approximately six to seven months old, was noticed by the residents of a flood relief camp at Harmoti. Since the calf’s mother was nowhere seen, the local villagers alerted the forest department and two days later a mobile veterinary service unit rescued the animal.
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Six rhino calves had been rescued in the second wave of the floods between August 11 and August 18 which had left 85% of the Kaziranga National Park ( KNP) submerged. This was one of the biggest disasters to have affected KNP in the recent time.
Experts like Mr. Barman pointed out that being prone to floods, the animals in Kaziranga were familiar with the situation and move to higher grounds. But in the second wave, there was only a moderate rainfall in Kaziranga and the water rose by about eight feet on August 12 evening giving the animals little time.
Flood toll reaches 280
Satyendra Singh, Director of the KNP, said so far 280 animals had died in the second phase. Of them 240 were deer (224 of them hog deer), 13 sambar deer, three swamp deer and 24 rhinoceros.
Of the 24 rhinoceros, 15 were calves. “For calves it becomes difficult to deal with floods as they cannot swim long distance and reach higher ground and once they are separated from the mother it becomes difficult for them to survive,” Mr. Singh said. The Kaziranga National Park sustains a population of about 2,000 Indian Rhinos, a mega herbivore and vulnerable species under the International Union for Conservation of Nature ( IUCN) in 2008.
The KNP director said the forest department along with the help of voluntary organisations working there had rescued 54 animals in this phase, including six rhino calves, 43 hog deer, two swamp deer, two birds and one phython.
16 rhinos rescued in past three years
After the rescue, the challenge for the forest officials and the WTI experts was to nurture these young animals. In the past three years, 16 rhino calves had been displaced due to floods and were being kept at the Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation (CWRC) at Panbari inside the KNP which was being administered by the Assam Forest Department, WTI and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).
“In 2016, eight calves were rescued and in 2015 one. We have 16 rhinos at the centre and the oldest one is two years old,” Mr. Barman said.
At the CWRC, the calves would be kept till they turned three. Veterinarians taking care of these animals said the calves were fed only milk till 18 months and as they grow older they would be given fodder along with concentrated feed.
There are plans to put the calves in an in situ conservation centre once they are three years old and then release them in the national parks of Assam with radio collars.