They were only a few months old when floods in August 2016 at Kaziranga National Park displaced them. When rescuers found the two rhino calves, they were so small that they had to be fed milk in bottles.
Almost two-and-half years later, the calves, one male and other female, will find home at Manas National Park, about 450 km away from Kaziranga.
On January 22, they were transported to an enclosure, where they will get acclimatised to the surroundings of the Manas National Park, before they are released in the wild. Officials overseeing the translocation said that both the animals, who grew up together at Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation (CWRC) at Kaziranga, have been radio-collared so that their movement in the wild are monitored.
Abhishek Narayanan, head of the Wildlife Rescue Division of Wildlife Trust of India, said that since 2002, when CWRC started, more than 50 calves stranded in the wild at Kaziranga National Park for various reasons, in most cases due to floods, have been rescued.
“Out of these, 16 were translocated to Manas. A few gave birth to calves, thus augmenting the number of rhinos at the Manas National Park by around 20,” Mr Narayanan said. The number of rhinos there at present is 38.
The augmentation of Rhinos were part of the initiative “Bring Back Manas’, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Experts like Mr. Narayanan emphasise that other than KNP which has over 2,200 one horned Rhinos there is a need for more national tigers and tiger reserve to have good population of Rhinos along the terai arc. Mr Narayanan said that other than Manas National Park, Jaldapara National Park has about 50 rhinos and Dudhwa Tiger Reserve over 30 Rhinos.
