SILCHAR: Assam did not record a single incident of rhino poaching in 2025 due to the state’s excellent conservation efforts, chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Thursday.
“You heard it right, zero rhinos have been poached in Assam in 2025, continuing our excellent conservation efforts and maintaining our streak of protecting Assam’s pride,” the chief minister said in a post on X.
In 2022, the state was, for the first time since 1977, able to ensure that poachers did not kill a single rhino. But one rhino death was reported in 2023 while two were killed in 2024, which led the authorities to launch Operation Falcon, a multi-agency crackdown that have foiled nine poaching attempts.
A senior Assam police officer said 42 poachers were arrested in the state in 2024 and 2025, who were linked to six poaching gangs.
Assam is home to the world’s largest population of one-horned rhinos, with the majority found in Kaziranga National Park, apart from Manas, Orang National Park and Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary.
Between 2000 and 2021, at least 191 rhinos were poached in Assam. The worst years were 2013 and 2014, when 27 rhinos were killed each year. However, incidents declined steadily thereafter, dropping to three cases in 2019, two in 2020 and just one case in 2021.
In June 2021, the state also formed a Special Anti-Poaching Task Force that brought together senior officials from the forest and police departments for joint operations.
Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve director Sonali Ghosh said the steps that have ensured the safety of rhinos include intelligence sharing, coordinated patrolling, surveillance using drones and CCTV cameras, and close monitoring of known poachers.
Ghosh said heightened vigilance during high-risk periods such as floods and full-moon nights, along with cooperation from local communities living around protected areas, had also been critical in preventing poaching.
In a symbolic move against illegal wildlife trade and superstition linked to rhino horns, the Assam government also destroyed nearly 2,500 rhino horns that had been seized by the authorities in 2021.
According to Ghosh, Rhinos are listed under Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, and international trade in rhino horns is banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
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