World Rhino Day

• The Assam government is all set to burn 2,479 pieces of rhino horn housed in state treasuries on September 22 on the occasion of World Rhino Day.
• World Rhino Day is a day of awareness for all five rhino species and the work being done to save them, this year is the 10th anniversary.

• The state cabinet also decided that 94 rhino horns will be preserved as heritage pieces for academic purposes, while 50 rhino horns will be preserved for court cases.

• During the verification process, the Rhino Horn Verification Committee recorded the world’s largest horn, weighing 3.051 kg and 36 cm in height.

• The horn was found in 1982 from a rhino in the Bagori range of Kaziranga National Park.

• The Greater One-Horned Rhino is one among the five different species of Rhino. The other four are:

1. Black Rhino: Smaller of the two African species.
2. White Rhino: Recently, researchers have created an embryo of the northern white rhino by using In-vitro Fertilization (IVF) process.
3. Javan Rhino: Critically endangered in IUCN Red List.
4. Sumatran Rhino: Recently gone extinct in Malaysia.

• There are three species of rhino in Asia—Greater one-horned (Rhinoceros unicornis), Javan, and Sumatran.
• Only the Great One-Horned Rhino is found in India.
• Also known as the Indian rhino, it is the largest of the rhino species.
• It is identified by a single black horn and a grey-brown hide with skin folds.
• They primarily graze, with a diet consisting almost entirely of grasses as well as leaves, branches of shrubs and trees, fruit, and aquatic plants.

Habitat:

• The species is restricted to small habitats in Indo-Nepal terai and northern West Bengal and Assam.
• In India, rhinos are mainly found in Assam, West Bengal, and Uttar Pradesh.
• Assam has an estimated 2,640 rhinos in four protected areas, i.e. *
• Pabitora Wildlife Reserve, Rajiv Gandhi Orang National Park, Kaziranga National Park, and Manas National Park.
• About 2,400 of them are in the Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve (KNPTR)

Protection Status:

• IUCN Red List: Vulnerable.
• Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES): Appendix I (Threatened with extinction and CITES prohibits international trade in specimens of these species except when the purpose of the import is not commercial, for instance for scientific research).
• Wildlife Protection Act, 1972: Schedule I.

Threats :

1. Poaching for the horns
2. Habitat loss
3. Population density
4. Decreasing Genetic diversity

Conservation Efforts by India:

• The five rhino range nations (India, Bhutan, Nepal, Indonesia and Malaysia) have signed a declaration ‘The New Delhi Declaration on Asian Rhinos 2019’ for the conservation and protection of the species.
• National Rhino Conservation Strategy: It was launched in 2019 to conserve the greater one-horned rhinoceros.
• Indian Rhino Vision 2020: Launched in 2005, it is an ambitious effort to attain a wild population of at least 3,000 greater one-horned rhinos spread over seven protected areas in the Indian state of Assam by the year 2020.