Activists of All Assam Students Union (Aasu), Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuba Chatra Parishad (AJYCP), Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS), All Assam Journalist Union (Aaju) and Bokakhat Press Club on Monda

Rhinos in Assam are back in the cross-hairs of poachers. Following a lull of hardly a month towards the end of 2012, the poachers have returned to Kaziranga National Park, gunning down seven rhinos in the current year. That makes it one rhino killed every week there alone. And two other rhinos have been killed elsewhere in the state.

"Yes, incidents of poaching have gone up in the past few weeks," said Assam forest and environment minister Rockybull Hussain. "What is alarming is that while earlier it was criminals and smugglers who were involved in poaching of rhinos, recent incidents have revealed the involvement of armed militant groups."

Suspected poachers killed yet again a rhino in Kaziranga National Park on Sunday and axed off its horn, which has taken the death toll of rhinos in past 47 days in Assam to 10.

The park authorities, who seem to have been groping in dark about the nexus of poachers, said that forest guards spotted a bullet-ridden body of a male mature rhino near Kawoimari forest camp in Bagori range of the park on Sunday morning.

What are the odds of survival of a forest guard armed with a bolt-action rifle of WWII vintage while facing a poacher armed with an HK MP5 submachine gun? By the time he cocks his rifle and takes aim, his opponent would have shot him 100 times. This probably explains why the rhino and its defenders are unsafe in Assam. In less than two months, eight rhinos have been killed in the state, four of them in a just a week. Last year, the count was 21.

Often pulled up for their ineptitude, the foresters face insurmountable odds. An officer in Assam says they have been battling poachers with.315 bore and 12 bore guns and 7.62mm 2A1 bolt-action rifles (erroneously referred to as .303). These weapons are good to scare off wild animals, but are useless against poachers with AK rifles.

Soaring demand for rhino horns in Vietnam is posing a threat to the long-term conservation of one-horned rhinos in the state.

Rhino poaching has assumed menacing proportions in Assam, with the number of one-horned pachyderms poached in recent months almost equalling the number of rhinos killed in the devastating floods th

Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi today said that the State Government was seeking a CBI probe into the recent spurt in rhino poaching, especially in Kaziranga National Park.

The Rhino Task Force set up by the state government to improve security in rhino inhabited areas of the state has reaffirmed its target to attain 3,000 wild rhinos by 2020 in the face of the ongoin

Lucknow: Have Dudhwa tigers shunned their preferred prey - the cheetals and sambhars - to hunt the mighty rhinos? The killing of a 35-yearold female rhino by a tiger in Dudhwa national park and the subsequent eating of the carcass has raised a doubt if the behaviour of Dudhwa tigers is changing.

The experts are not ready to buy the argument that the declining prey base is the reason why tigers are hunting and eating rhinos. "If tiger population in the park is increasing, prey base can not decline," said Tito Joseph from the wildlife protection society of India (WPSI). The tiger sneaked into the rhino rehabilitation area to kill the 35-year-old female rhino Pavitri, brought to Dudhwa in 1984 under the rhino rehabilitation programme.

After a lot of flip-flops, the Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon (MCG) has once again agreed "in principle" to take over the service of water supply from the public health engineering department.