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Rhino census underway in West Bengal

     Jalpaiguri (West Bengal): The West Bengal forest department is conducting a census on the rhinoceros population of Gorumara National Park in Jalpaiguri District of West Bengal. The forest department has started collecting specific information about each rhinoceros so that the animals can be easily identified in case of emergency. "Male, female, adult and calf, these are what we will be looking at. We have clicked their photographs and will give them specific identification marks on the basis of either their horns or tales or a mark on their body. We will try to do this in this census so that we can register the details about each rhinoceros," said Tapash Das, District Forest Officer, Wild life, Jaipaiguri Division. Forest officials say that poaching is virtually non-existent at Gorumara due to extremely alert guards and cooperative foresters, but an adverse sex ratio does not augur well for the rhinos. The one-horned rhino, which is found only in the forests of India, are in maximum number in the Kaziranga National Park in Assam, where about 1700 of the species are believed to graze in the vast marshy grasslands of the mighty Brahmaputra river basin.
-Mar 29,  2008