High alert in India over rhino poaching

0 Comments | AFP, April, 2007

KAZIRANGA, India (AFP) — Wardens at a national park in northeastern India have raised the alarm following a sharp rise in the poaching of endangered one-horned rhinos, officials said Monday.

"Six rhinos poached in about 100 days, including two of the beasts killed in the past week, is a matter of grave concern. A security alert has been sounded," Utpal Bora, a warden at Kaziranga national park, told AFP.

The park, situated in the northeastern state of Assam, is home to about 1,855 of the world's estimated 2,700 one-horned rhinoceros.

"We are certain that the recent cases of hunting the rhinos for their horns were done at the behest of a very organised international poaching syndicate which has pumped in lot of funds to attract shooters to kill the animals,"...