Hollywood star and environmental campaigner Leonardo DiCaprio has praised India’s conservation efforts and protection of the endangered Greater One--Horned rhinos, which poachers pushed to the edge of extinction.
The star of Titanic praised on Instagram India’s conservation efforts for the species at Kaziranga National Park in north-eastern Assam state — the only natural habitat for the giant animals.
The Greater One-Horn rhinos are the largest of the Asian rhinoceros species and for decades were poached for their keratin-rich horns, believed to be a key ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine.
India launched Project Rhino in 2005 to end poaching and achieve the target of their population being preserved at least to the level of 3,000 by 2020.
DiCaprio called the conservation of the species and increase in their population a “triumph”.
“In 2021, the government of the Indian state of Assam set out to end the poaching of the endangered Greater One-Horned rhinoceros in Kaziranga National Park following the killing of around 190 animals for their horns between 2000 and 2021,” he wrote.
“In 2022, they met their goal and no rhinos were poached in the area for the first time since 1977."
The rhinos were declared an endangered species in 1975 after their numbers dropped to a few hundred.
But over the decades, with the work of conservationists and dedicated police and forest guards, some of them armed with AK-47 rifles, their population has grown remarkably at the park.
Last year, the government said that the rhino population increased by 200 over the past four years and no cases of poaching were reported at the park in more than four decades.
There are 2,613 rhinos living in the protected zone of the park, spread over 430 square km, the government said last year, while nearly 600 are in six other national parks across Assam and West Bengal state.
The mammals were downgraded from endangered to the vulnerable category in the 2008 Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Only adult males have horns, which can measure up to 25cm and weigh 3kg. The animals use their horns to protect their calves, dig for water and defend territory.
