One horned Rhino

Why is in news? Rhino horns trafficked with impunity: report

There are five species of rhino – white and black rhinos in Africa, and the greater one-horned, Javan and Sumatran rhino species in Asia.

Only the Great One-Horned Rhino is found in India. Also known as Indian rhino, it is the largest of the rhino species.

It is identified by a single black horn and a grey-brown hide with skin folds.

They primarily graze, with a diet consisting almost entirely of grasses as well as leaves, branches of shrubs and trees, fruit, and aquatic plants.

The species is restricted to small habitats in Indo-Nepal terai and northern West Bengal and Assam. In India, rhinos are mainly found in Assam, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh.

Assam has an estimated 2,640 rhinos in four protected areas, i.e. Pabitora Wildlife Reserve, Rajiv Gandhi Orang National Park, Kaziranga National Park, and Manas National Park.

About 2,400 of them are in the Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve (KNPTR) – World Heritage Site of UNESCO.

Protection Status:

IUCN Red List: One-Horned Rhino: Vulnerable

CITES: Appendix I (Threatened with extinction and CITES prohibits international trade in specimens of these species except when the purpose of the import is not commercial, for instance for scientific research).

Wildlife Protection Act, 1972: Schedule I.

Black Rhino: Critically endangered - Smaller of the two African species.

White Rhino: Near Threatened. Researchers have created an embryo of the northern white rhino by using In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) process.

Javan: Critically Endangered

Sumatran Rhino: Critically Endangered. It has gone extinct in Malaysia.

Threats: Poaching for the horns, Habitat loss, Population density, Decreasing Genetic diversity, etc.

Conservation Efforts:

The five rhino range nations (India, Bhutan, Nepal, Indonesia and Malaysia) have signed a declaration ‘The New Delhi Declaration on Asian Rhinos 2019’ for the conservation and protection of the species.

Recently, the Ministry of Environment Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has begun a project to create DNA profiles of all rhinos in the country.

National Rhino Conservation Strategy: It was launched in 2019 to conserve the greater one-horned rhinoceros.

Indian Rhino Vision 2020: Launched in 2005, it was an ambitious effort to attain a wild population of at least 3,000 greater one-horned rhinos spread over seven protected areas in the Indian state of Assam by the year 2020.