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Kaziranga National Park :India February 13, 2006

Located on the banks of the mighty Brahmaputra River in the far North East of India, Assam, Kaziranga National Park covers an area of approximately 430-sq-kms with its swamps and tall thickets of elephant grass making it the ideal habitat for the Indian One-Horned Rhino. Due to limitless poaching of this prehistoric survivor, the Kaziranga National Park was declared a wildlife sanctuary in 1940.

Kaziranga is home also to elephants, sloth bears, tigers, leopard cats, jungle cats, hog badgers, capped langurs, hoolock gibbons, pigs, jackals, porcupines, pythons, wild buffaloes, Indian bison, swamp deer, sambhars and hog deer. Besides these, the park has a respectable avian population, which increases considerably in the winter, when migrating birds visit the park.

Kaziranga has become the last breeding ground of the fabled one-horned Indian rhino, once found throughout the Himalayan foothills. But today, rhinos are confined to a few sanctuaries in Assam, Bengal, and Nepal. They are vulnerable, shortsighted vegetarians, whose much sought after horn is nothing but harmless compressed hair! The supposedly armor plated rhino only has thick folds of gray skin over its shoulders and hocks. The short squat legs, quaint chapatti-roll ears, and silly little tail make it appear ungainly. Thriving in Kaziranga’s flat elephant grass country dotted with shallow swamps and dense jungles, rhinos only have short tusks for warding off attacks. Rescued rhino calves become quite friendly, eating out of your hand if they trust you.

Kaziranga also has a commendable population of birds. One can find huge flocks of pelicans, rose-ringed parakeets apart from crested serpent eagles, grey-headed fishing eagles, red jungle fowl, Bengal floricabs, bar-headed geese, whistling teals and swamp partridges. The commonly found storks are black-necked, adjutant and open-billed. Egrets and herons of almost all types can be spotted sitting on the peripheries of water bodies fed by the Brahmaputra.

The park also has elephants, swamp or wild buffalo (Over 70% of the world population), swamp deer, hog deer, barking deer, sambar/ Hoolock gibbon, pythons, civet cat, wild boar and tigers. There is a rich variety of fresh water fowls, over 450 species of woodland and grassland birds of which 18 species are globally threatened. Birds like the egrets, pond herons, river tern, black necked storks, pelican, partridges, Bengal florican stork, pied horn bill, fishing eagle are found in abundance. The river here, has the gharial (fish eating crocodile) and dolphins.


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