Kaziranga's 2022 Census Counted 2,613 Greater One-Horned Rhinos, Against an Estimated Dozen or So in 1908, and the Cabinet Has Cleared a 34.5-Kilometre Elevated Corridor for Wildlife Beside the Park

Kaziranga National Park in Assam counted 2,613 greater one-horned rhinoceroses in a four-day census held from 25 to 28 March 2022, up from 2,413 in 2018, PTI reported. UNESCO, which put the park on the World Heritage List in 1985, describes it as holding the single largest population of the species. No newer park-wide census has been published, and a Sentinel report of 17 September 2026 still gave the park as holding more than 2,600.

The Press Information Bureau (PIB), the government’s press office, says Assam holds about 80 per cent of the world’s greater one-horned rhinos. Our profile of Assam’s government, economy and people covers the state around the park.

What UNESCO inscribed in 1985

UNESCO lists the property at 42,996 hectares, about 430 square kilometres, under two natural criteria. Criterion (ix) covers ongoing ecological processes: the Brahmaputra’s shifting channels, bank erosion, new land and new pools, and the way grassland and woodland replace each other over time. UNESCO says wet alluvial grassland covers nearly two thirds of the park and is kept in order by annual flooding and burning.

Criterion (x) rests on the rhino. UNESCO’s text gives the population as over 2,000 and lists tiger, Asian elephant, wild water buffalo, gaur, eastern swamp deer, hoolock gibbon and sloth bear among the other threatened species. It adds that the park has been a Tiger Reserve since 2007, has recorded one of the highest tiger densities in the country, lies at the junction of two bird flyways and shelters Ganges river dolphins in some oxbow lakes.

The Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 gives the park the highest legal protection, and the Assam Forest Department manages it under an approved plan. UNESCO calls its state of protection one of the best in India. The same entry names poaching, riverbank erosion, invasive plants, tourism pressure and heavy highway traffic as the main threats.

From a dozen or so rhinos to 2,613

The Assam government issued a preliminary notification for the area on 1 June 1905, and a final notification followed on 3 January 1908, constituting the Kaziranga Reserved Forest of 56,544 acres. Kees Rookmaaker of the Rhino Resource Center gives both dates in a 2019 paper, citing the department’s own 1907 to 1908 report.

Estimates of the rhinos left in 1908 differ. Lucy Vigne and Esmond Bradley Martin wrote in the journal Pachyderm in 1994 that only a dozen or so were believed to remain. Anwaruddin Choudhury, an Assam civil servant and naturalist, wrote that a few dozen were believed to be left. Both phrase it as a belief rather than a count.

Choudhury lists the later steps: a game sanctuary in 1916, a wildlife sanctuary in 1950 and a national park in 1974. The first census by direct count from elephant back came in 1966 and found 366 rhinos. The Forest Department figures printed in Pachyderm then run 658 in 1972, 939 in 1978, 1,080 in 1984 and 1,164 in 1993. The department’s 2006 census, quoted in its Indian Rhino Vision paper, gave 1,855 for Kaziranga.

The 2022 census recorded 903 adult females, 750 adult males and 170 adults of undetermined sex, plus 279 juveniles and 146 calves, PTI reported. It listed 64 enumerators, 12 independent observers and 49 media observers. Fifty elephants covered the park and its additional areas, 252 frontline staff took part and drones were used to recheck samples. The same census found 125 rhinos in Orang National Park (101 in 2018) and 107 in Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary (102 in 2018).

In April 2023 an RTI activist (a citizen using the Right to Information Act) wrote to the Union environment ministry alleging that the department’s projection from 22 sample blocks overstated the total, which he said should have been 2,042. Assam’s Principal Chief Conservator of Forests replied that the allegation came from a misreading of the standard operating procedure for the census, PTI reported.

A poaching record that reached zero in 2022 and 2025

Poaching in Kaziranga peaked in 1992, when 49 rhinos were killed: 45 shot, two caught in pits and two electrocuted, according to Forest Department data printed in Pachyderm. In 1993, 39 had been poached by early December. The Prime Minister said at Kaliabor on 18 January 2026 that dozens of rhinos were killed in Assam in 2013 and 2014, and that no poaching incident was reported there in 2025.

Departmental data cited by The Sentinel on 17 September 2026 put Kaziranga’s first year of zero rhino killings at 2022 and called 2025 the second such year since the 1970s. The same data say killings and attempted killings in the park have fallen 86 per cent since 2016. Over that period 42 suspected poachers were arrested, six poaching camps destroyed and nine attempts foiled. There are now 253 forest camps inside and around the park, and the department uses drones, thermal cameras and a network of informants.

The Prime Minister also credited women forest guards known as Van Durga. PIB’s 2024 World Rhino Day note adds that Assam burned 2,479 rhino horns as a statement of zero tolerance, and that a 2009 state amendment to the Wildlife (Protection) Act brought life imprisonment for repeat offenders.

Indian Rhino Vision 2020 and a second home in Manas

In June 2005 the Assam government set up a task force to plan moves of rhinos within the state, with support from WWF and the International Rhino Foundation. Its goal, named Indian Rhino Vision 2020, was 3,000 wild rhinos in seven protected areas by 2020, up from a little over 2,000 in three. Manas National Park had lost its rhinos to poaching during the unrest of the 1990s and was chosen as the first release site.

On 11 and 12 April 2008 two sub-adult males captured at Pobitora were driven more than 250 km and released in Manas, according to the department’s account of the operation. By 2021, 22 rhinos had been moved to Manas from Kaziranga and Pobitora, Mongabay India reported on 11 May 2026, and a study recorded 35 births in the park between 2012 and 2021. The Sentinel gave Manas as holding 40 to 50 in September 2026. The International Rhino Foundation says Manas reached 40 rhinos and that not all of the programme’s original goals were met.

148 adult tigers across three divisions

The report “Status of Tigers in Kaziranga, 2024” was released on 29 July 2025. Paired camera traps ran from December 2023 to April 2024 across 1,307.49 square kilometres in three divisions of the tiger reserve, following the Phase IV protocol of the National Tiger Conservation Authority and the Wildlife Institute of India. The method is the one explained in our piece on how India counts its tigers and lions.

PTI reported 148 adult tigers: 83 females, 55 males and 10 of undetermined sex. The Eastern Assam Wildlife Division recorded 115, up from 104 in the 2022 count, Nagaon recorded 6, and Biswanath, sampled for the first time, recorded 27. The density was 18.65 tigers per 100 square kilometres, which PTI placed third behind Bandipur (19.83) and Corbett (19.56).

Floods, the hills and the highway

The same floods that keep the grassland open send animals out of the park. UNESCO says many move beyond its boundary at high water, where they are exposed to hunting and to reprisal for crop damage. It also records that the river’s migration cost about 5,000 hectares of forest between 1925 and 1986. The monsoon behind the rise is explained in our piece on the science of the monsoon, and the river’s erosion downstream is the subject of our article on Majuli.

The Cabinet’s October 2025 note describes the route. In the monsoon the park floods and wildlife moves toward the elevated Karbi Anglong hills, crossing the old highway, now NH-715. The note says heavy round-the-clock traffic causes frequent accidents and deaths of wild animals. In the 1998 flood, according to B. S. Bonal, then the park’s Director, staff kept up round-the-clock duty on that highway so that animals could reach higher ground in Karbi Anglong. WWF’s Tiger Conservation Programme gave the park a Rs 2 lakh special award that year for teamwork in handling the emergency.

The NH-715 elevated corridor

On 1 October 2025 the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved four-laning of the 85.675 km Kaliabor to Numaligarh section of NH-715 at a total capital cost of Rs 6,957 crore. Civil works account for Rs 4,829 crore and land acquisition for Rs 622 crore. The contract mode is engineering, procurement and construction.

The project includes an elevated corridor of 34.45 km (about 34.5 km) through the park, upgrading of 30.22 km of existing road and two greenfield bypasses totalling 21 km at Jakhalabandha and Bokakhat. The existing highway has a restricted right of way of 16 to 32 metres. The Prime Minister performed the Bhoomi Pujan, the ground-breaking ceremony, at Kaliabor on 18 January 2026 and said the design follows the traditional movement routes of rhinos, elephants and tigers, with vehicles above and wildlife below.

NHAI said on 13 March 2026 that the project had drawn 18 bids and was scheduled to be awarded in the current financial year at Rs 6,956 crore. It said the elevated corridor will be built in sections of 18.3 km, 11.2 km and 5 km, and that it had received approvals from the National Board for Wildlife after consulting the Wildlife Institute of India, the National Tiger Conservation Authority and the Assam Forest Department.