JAKARTA (AFP)

NEW DELHI, Feb 25

A rhino in Jaldapara during the census on Sunday. Picture by Anirban Choudhury
Alipurduar, Feb. 24: The forest department will conduct a feasibility study to see if rhinos can be introduced in the Buxa Tiger Reserve to try and expand their gene pool in neighbouring Jaldapara, where it has apparently suffered because of years of breeding among a small group of animals.

The rhino population in a national park at the Himalayan foothills has gone up. Elated officials of the West Bengal forest department are now getting ready to carry out a census in another reserve forest.

Alipurduar, Feb. 15: A woman has been gored and bitten to death by a rhino in Jaldapara even as foresters get ready to conduct a census on the animal in the sanctuary this weekend.

On Friday evening, Pramila Munda (50) of Pradhan Para in Alipurduar, along with other villagers, had entered the Moiradanga beat to collect firewood. They were chased by a rhino on their return home.

OUR CORRESPONDENT

habitat under threat: A file picture of a rhino in Jaldapara Wildlife Sanctuary
Alipurduar Jan. 11: The foresters are upbeat about the increasing number of the Indian one-horned rhinoceros in the Jaldapara Wildlife Sanctuary but what is a source of worry for them is the deteriorating state of their habitat.

One hundred rhinos have died in the current year at Kaziranga National Park. Out of them 93 died of natural causes. Seven of these were killed by the poachers. The rhinos who died of natural causes include those killed by tigers and those who died of old age, and due to floods.

Manas (Assam): It was a freedom stroll in the wild for three female one-horned rhinoceros of the UNESCO world heritage site, Manas Sanctuary in the foothills of the Himalayas, last week.

Hand-raised by the wildlife experts for more than six years at a rescue centre in Assam's Kaziranga National Park, the rhino calves were displaced from their natural habitat due to floods in the sanctuary.

From endangered to vulnerable THE International Union for Conservation of Nature or iucn has lowered the threat level of the Indian one-horned rhinoceros from endangered to vulnerable. This has not gone down well with conservationists in India who contend rhinos are extremely threatened from poaching and epidemics. Seventy per cent of rhino population is concentrated in just one