The One Horned Rhino

The Jaldapara Wildlife Sanctuary is the only place in present day Bengal where the one horned Asian Rhinoceros is found. This species of rhino which was once found all across Bengal in the districts of Darjeeling, Coochbehar, Maldah, Murshidabad and even in the Sunderbansa was, in fact, on the verge of extinction at one point of time as a result of indiscriminate hunting and loss of habitat.

Nripendra Narayan, the Maharaja of Coochbehar, is said to have killed more than 207 rhinos between 1871 and 1907 in Coochbehar and Buxa. The effect of such killing was so very much destructive that there were only about a dozen rhinos left in the forests of North Bengal during the 1930s.

Conservation efforts were started and the Bengal Rhinoceros Preservation Act of 1932 was passed. This yielded results and sustained efforts at conservation resulted in the icrease in the rhino popultion in Jaldapara from 19 in 1978 to 124 in 2007 in surveys conducted by Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun).