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| Location: |
Asia - South Asia - India |
| Subject: |
Distribution |
| Species: |
Indian Rhino |
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Shebbeare (1935, pp. 1229-1231) gives the following account:
Though this rhinoceros is becoming alarmingly rare everywhere, Nepal and Assam are better off than Bengal, where its habitat is restricted to a few places in the Duars and Cooch Behar State. Here the last main stronghold of the species is a tract of high grass savannah along the Torsa river, stretching from the foothills of Bhutan, through the Duars into Cooch Behar. It is a narrow strip, not more than 40 miles from the north to the south and, at its widest, four miles from east to west perhaps 50 or 60 square miles. Outside this tract the few scattered colonies can perhaps muster a dozen individuals in all, but unfortunately these outliers have no spare coverts into which they can expand. . . .
Contrary to what one hears of African rhino, ours is seldom aggressive, nor does he cause havoc to agricultural crops like the elephant. For the last 25 years in Bengal and Assam rhino have been closed to sportsmen, but this has not saved them from poachers, who shoot them to obtain their horns. From time immemorial these have been highly prized for superstitious reasons. A cup made of the horn of a rhinoceros is still believed to render poison innocuous, a point of some importance to tyrannical rulers, and, when powdered, it is held in the East, especially in China, to be the most potent aphrodisiac. It is believed that most of the horns that are smuggled out of these jungles eventually find their way to China, but however this may be their present value in the Calcutta market is about half their weight in gold. A single horn retrieved from the poachers recently fetched 150 pounds, and still higher prices have been known. That an animal by nature condemned to carry such a price on his nose should tempt poachers is not to be wondered at, but the remoteness of their strongholds, and their armour, too thick to be penetrated by "gas-pipe" guns, was their protection, and up to about six years ago there were probably some 200 animals living in the small tract I have described. Then poaching began. The first poachers came from Assam, where they had plied the same trade, and brought with them muzzle-loading guns heavy enough to kill a rhino. They were j pined by local men of the same tribe (Mechs) and formed themselves into gangs. Their plan was to build a light bamboo staging about 8 ft. above the ground at strategic points, usually where two well-worn rhino tracks met, and lie up when ths moon was nearly full. Sooner or later a victim was bound to pass and received a heavy bullet at a range of a few feet .... They seldom took more than the horn; to try to dispose of the meat, which, by the way, is -excellent eating, would have aroused suspicion .... For nearly three years this went on without any suspicion being aroused.
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Protecting the great Indian rhinoceros
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