No rhinos were poached last year at the world’s largest reserve for the endangered great one-horned rhinoceros in India’s Assam state, officials said, for the first time since 1977.
Filled with elephant-grass grasslands, marshy lagoons and dense forests, Kaziranga National Park in northeastern India’s Assam is home to 2,200 rhinos, or two-thirds of their world population. It has attracted British royalty as well as cricket stars, but poaching had become a major concern.
Poachers killed more than 190 rhinos in Assam between 2000 and 2021, but none last year, according to data shared by Assam police with Reuters. The last time there was no poaching was in 1977.