News-'Kaziranga National Park may lose its World Heritage Site status'

‘Kaziranga National Park may lose its World Heritage Site status’
 KOHORA, Sept 6 – The Kaziranga National Park may lose its much coveted status of World Heritage Site for Nature and Wildlife, if the killing of one-horned Indian rhinos continues unabated.

“If the situation continues to be grim like Manas National Park was during the Bodo movements in the late 80s and early 90s , then UNESCO would definitely declare Kaziranga National Park as a World Heritage Site in Danger”, said a senior retired forest official. According to him, UNESCO would take a note of the present situation in Kaziranga which is not at all healthy.

While talking to this correspondent, Forest Department sources said that the root cause of the current crisis in Kaziranga was intelligence failure, since forest personnel could not pinpoint the exact location of either entry or exit of poachers in Kaziranga because whatever inputs the Forest Department received were only general and not specific.

Secondly, the sources said that it is not possible for the forest staff to intercept any poachers if the latter enter the park by the Brahmaputra river, since the long stretch of the river bank adjoining the park makes the task very difficult. The poachers are experts in carrying out their strategy perfectly and always succeed in killing the rhinos. They also get first hand information about the movements of the forest patrolling party and thus kill the rhinos and move away before the arrival of guards.

To get rid of this problem, the Forest Department will have to keep at least three informers, and provide them good incentives for specific information.

The sources also added that some tall towers may also be erected along the NH 37, and guards placed round-the-clock with night vision binoculars to trace the movement of any outsiders inside the park area. The young forest staff, who were recruited a couple of years back, can be brought over to Kaziranga and posted at the park for at least a minimum period of five years since most of the present forest staff in Kaziranga is too old for the job.

[Source:Assam Tribune 7^th Sept 2013,article by Debasish Baruah]