A female rhino, Rajeshwari, died in a tiger attack in the rhino rehabilitation area-1 (RRA-1) in the south Sonaripur range of the Dudhwa Tiger Reserve (DTR), on Wednesday morning.
The rhino was wallowing in Amha Tal, a water pond in RRA when the tiger attacked and killed it.
According to wildlife experts, rhinos are not ideal prey for tigers in Dudhwa due to their bulky size and thick skin. They said tiger attacks on rhinos are rare but not uncommon.
No tiger attacks on rhinos in Dudhwa have been reported for the past several years.
In 2023, a two-year-old rhino calf was reportedly killed in a leopard attack.
Dr H Rajamohan, field director (FD), DTR, said that mahouts Rameshwar, Irshad, Bramhadin and Ayyub and others, who were part of the monitoring teams, witnessed a tiger attacking the rhino in the pool while monitoring the area on elephants, on Wednesday morning.
The monitoring teams drove away the tiger and inspected the rhino, which was identified as the female rhino Rajeshwari.
He added that the deceased rhino was a female of about 30 years and was one of the in-bred animals at DTR.
Rajamohan instructed a panel to conduct a post-mortem examination of the rhino, which established a tiger attack as the cause of death.
The carcass was later disposed of.
Apart from one-horned rhinos, DTR is also an ideal home to royal Bengal tigers, wild elephants, several other reptiles, aquatic animals and winged birds.
Project Rhino
Project Rhino was initiated in 1984 in DTR to reintroduce the rhino population in the Terai land of Lakhimpur Kheri, where they were abundant a century ago but later went extinct.
Under the project, a fenced rhino rehabilitation area (RRA1) was established in south Sonaripur range and the project started with just five rhinos from Assam. Their population grew considerably in later years.
Rajamohan told Hindustan Times that “the recent estimation of rhinos in RRA1 was 49.”
To accommodate the growing population, a second RRA was established at Bhadi Tal in the Belrayan range of DTR in 2017-18, housing two rhinos from RRA-1 along with a migrated rhino from Nepal.
Rhino numbers here too have increased.
