Eastern Himalayas

In India's North Bank Landscape in the Eastern Himalayas, WWF, the government of Assam and other partners are working with local communities – including ex-poachers – to protect Manas National Park. This April, Manas was where the first set of rhinos were moved as part of Indian Rhino Vision 2020 – an ambitious effort to increase Indian rhino numbers by moving animals from healthy populations to protected areas with no rhinos. Join Sujoy Banerjee, WWF-India’s Director of Species Conservation, on this historic translocation.

Right Time for Rhinos
It was a long wait for this day. Over the past one and a half years, Manas National Park, once and now to be a future home for rhinos, went through a major reconstruction process. Security against poachers was reinstalled by construction of protection camps and posting of extra staff and volunteers. The habitat was monitored and found suitable for the rhinos.

There was eagerness on part of the Forest Department authorities to move the rhinos, and there was equal eagerness on part of Manas National Park authorities to receive them. But I was keeping my fingers crossed. The rhino translocations had to be called off a month ago at the very last moment due to non-availability of the proper drugs.

Not taking any chances this time, WWF sponsored a veterinarian to visit Singapore to procure the drugs. The vet came back with the drugs on Monday, April 7th, 2008, and the date of translocation was scheduled four days later. But anything could have gone wrong – bad weather, possibilities of ethnic clashes, curfew…

Slow Start
Everything seemed perfect on the big day. The weather gods smiled upon us and the day was clear. Pabitora Wildlife Sanctuary, from where the rhinos were to be moved, was agog with activity. Cranes, earth moving machinery, an ambulance and loads of trucks were in place.

The operation started off at 5:30am and a group of veterinarians went off on elephant-back to tranquilize the rhinos. Everything went off as planned initially. Of the four rhinos identified for translocation (two males and two females), we showed the tranquilizing team three of them one by one. The elephants, splayed out in a single file, gradually started cordoning the rhinos. But all three rhinos managed to break the elephant cordon.

Now it was 9:00am and the tranquilizing team had not been able to capture even a single rhino. The walkie-talkies were crackling with frantic conversations. The sun was now up and the temperature was rising. The rhinos had sensed that the people on elephant back were not usual visitors and avoided being closely approached. It appeared that the team may not be able to tranquilize even a single rhino.

First Rhino
We realized that the tranquilizing team must change tactics. They now started stalking the rhino on foot, using the elephants as cover. In the next half hour we tranquilized our first rhino – a male. After fifteen minutes of tracking, the rhino grew sluggish and his hind legs started sinking. A vet then approached this animal and gave him a second shot of tranquilizer. But as soon as the dart hit him, the animal was up on his feet and running again!

The rhino lost consciousness in the next ten minutes and the tranquilizing team approached him cautiously. When he was found totally unconscious, we covered the rhino’s eyes with a cloth and poured buckets of water over him to keep his body temperature down. While the vet team busied themselves taking measurements and samples; blood, nose smears, temperature, pulse, length, height etc., the radio collaring team started fixing the radio collar in place. The darts were taken out and the wound sprayed with antiseptics. The rhino was also administered antibiotics and sedatives for the long journey ahead. 

Third Time’s the Charm
To get the rhino into the crate for transport, an excavator began digging a cavity about a foot behind the sleeping rhino. Once the hole was deep enough, a stretcher was placed into this cavity. Everyone lent a hand in flipping over the rhino – weighing over a ton – onto the stretcher. The stretcher was then pulled out of the hole by the excavator and dragged about a third of a mile to the crate.

The crate has two sliding doors on both sides that can be lifted to open the cage.  To get the rhino inside we closed one side and kept the door near the rhino’s head halfway open. A vet entered the crate and administered antidote - drug for reviving the rhino. In ten seconds, the rhino was stirring and stood up on his feet, albeit a trifle groggy and dazed. But as soon as he gained a foothold he began pounding the walls of the crate with his horn.

The next step involved carefully removing the stretcher from the crate to provide the rhino a better foothold during transportation. Once it was out, the sliding doors of the cage were secured using iron strips bolted on the door and ropes around the entire crate.

A crane was brought in to lift the crate onto the back of the truck. In the first attempt, the crane lifted the crate a foot or two in the air only to find that it was tilting to one side. We lowered it back to the ground and the steel ropes were readjusted. On the second try the crate was lifted about eight feet from the ground but the rhino moved – tilting the crate at a precarious angle of 45 degrees.  For a moment it appeared that the crate would come crashing down with the poor rhino inside it. But the crate was maneuvered to the ground before anything untoward could take place.

Now the excavator was summoned. As the crane lifted the crate, we extended the excavator’s arm to keep the crate upright – and we loaded it onto the truck without any further event.

VIP Convoy
The team waited till sundown to start transporting the rhinos. At about 6:00pm, the convoy of vehicles started moving with the trucks carrying the rhinos in the center. As soon as the convoy reached the exit gate of the sanctuary, it was greeted by a huge number of local people, who had been waiting since morning to catch a glimpse of their rhinos. People cheered as the procession passed by.

The vet team kept monitoring the rhinos every half hour and water was poured over them periodically. The vehicles in the convoy maintained contact with each other through walkie-talkies. The police provided an escort vehicle with flashing lights to lead the convoy, and stopped traffic throughout the journey to make way for our "VIP" convoy.

The distance of 150 miles from Pabitora Wildlife Sanctuary to Manas National Park was covered in twelve hours due to slow pace of the convoy for the comfort and safety of the rhinos. It was daylight by the time we were reaching Manas, and only one obstacle needed to be negotiated…a flowing river!

People watched with baited breath as the first truck carrying the rhino crate entered the water. If the truck got stuck in the river, it would be a gargantuan task to pull it out. But luck was on our side as the truck crawled out the water uneventfully, the second truck following closely behind the first.

Camera-shy
The convoy entered the Manas National Park and continued some six miles inside to reach the area where the rhinos were to be released. Onlookers gathered around, with some placing themselves on the two machaan(elevated wooden platforms), built especially for this event. Dozens of cameras were lined up to record the history that was going to be created.

The door of the cage was lifted up. All eyes were focused on the rear of the truck from where the rhino was to emerge. The fingers on the cameras were ready and taut to click the best shots possible. But the rhino did not emerge.

In the next half hour that followed, attempts were repeatedly made to get the rhino up on his feet, but the rhino had planted itself firmly to the floor of his crate and would not budge. As the minutes passed, people were getting more apprehensive about some injury that may have incapacitated the rhino.

Home Free
It was then decided to release the second rhino. Some others got on to the top of the crate while I helped unscrew the bolts for opening the door. As the door was lifted a few inches, there was a bang and the rhino managed to lift the door with his horn. I was then staring at the face of a snorting rhino just two feet away! I jumped and moved aside. But the rhino could not balance the door on his nose for long and it came crashing down the very next moment.

While all this was happening, another drama began to unfold. The people on top of the first crate shouted that the rhino, which had not budged an inch for the past 45 minutes, decided to move. Someone shouted to me to run for cover (I was the only person on the ground) and I scampered into the cabin of the truck carrying the second rhino. The rhino emerged from the back of the truck and turned right, straight towards the truck full of people parked some twenty yards away! It banged on the truck with its horn five or six times, then it turned around and ran into the grassland. As it disappeared the crowd broke into a loud applause.

Before the second crate was opened, I had managed to plant myself on one of the machaanoverlooking the back of the second truck to get some pictures of the rhino release. As soon as the door of the crate containing the second rhino was opened, the head of the rhino poked out of the rear of the truck, and it surveyed the scene around it. Then it came out full charge, circled, and banged the side of the truck that had been carrying it for the past fourteen hours. Then it galloped and vanished into the thickets, again evoking loud applause from the crowd. 

People Power

Happy and content, but very weary, the team returned home. Most of us had a very scanty sleep over the past two nights, while some had not slept properly for three. Everyone was covered with a mix of sweat and dirt from head to toe.

As we drove back, the significance of this exercise dawned over me. If the Indian Rhino Vision 2020 Program goes successfully, then rhino populations can also be built up in other areas of Assam through translocations. This would create opportunities for tourism, reduce human-rhino conflicts and ensure the genetic health of India’s rhino populations.

What started as an initiative of the Government of Assam in partnership with WWF, International Rhino Foundation and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services had actually turned out to be a movement of the people of Assam.

created June 2008