Kaziranga National Park is a national park in the Golaghat and Nagaon districts of the state of Assam, India. The park, which hosts two-thirds of the world’s Indian rhinoceroses, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. According to the census held in March 2018 which was jointly conducted by the Forest Department of the Government of Assam and some recognized wildlife NGOs, the rhino population in Kaziranga National Park is 2,613. It comprises 1,641 adult rhinos (642 males, 793 females, 206 unsexed); 387 sub-adults (116 males, 149 females, 122 unsexed); and 385 calves.
In 2015, the rhino population stood at 2401. Kaziranga National Park was declared a Tiger Reserve in 2006. The park is home to large breeding populations of elephants, wild water buffalo, and swamp deer. Kaziranga is recognized as an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International for conservation of avifaunal species. When compared with other protected areas in India, Kaziranga has achieved notable success in wildlife conservation. Located on the edge of the Eastern Himalaya biodiversity hotspot, the park combines high species diversity and visibility.
Kaziranga is a vast expanse of tall elephant grass, marshland, and dense tropical moist broadleaf forests, criss-crossed by four major rivers, including the Brahmaputra, and the park includes numerous small bodies of water. Kaziranga has been the theme of several books, songs, and documentaries. The park celebrated its centennial in 2005 after its establishment in 1905 as a reserve forest.
In 2017, Kaziranga came under severe criticism after a BBC News documentary revealed a hardliner strategy to conservation, reporting the killing of 20 people a year in the name of rhino conservation. As a consequence of this reporting, BBC News was banned from filming in protected areas in India for 5 years. While several news reports claimed that BBC had apologized for the documentary, the BBC stood by its report, with its Director General, Tony Hall, writing in a letter to Survival International that the letter “in no way constitutes an apology for our journalism.” As a response to the report, researchers in India have provided more nuanced understanding of the matter, calling out BBC for the carelessness of its journalism, but also pointing to the problems of conservation in Kaziranga and questioning whether shoot-at-sight has been a useful conservation strategy at all.
