Indian Rhino Vision 2020 (IRV 2020):
The ambitious Indian Rhino Vision 2020 (IRV 2020) came to a close with the release of two rhinos an adult male and a female in Assam’s Manas National Park transported from Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary about 185 km east.
- Designed in 2005, the IRV2020 is believed to have achieved its target of attaining a population of 3,000 rhinos in Assam.
- But the plan to spread the Rhinoceros unicornis across four protected areas beyond Kaziranga National Park, Orang National Park, and Pobitora could not materialize.
- Assam had at least five rhino-bearing areas till the 1980s.
- Better conservation efforts helped maintain the population of the one-horned herbivore in Kaziranga, Orang, and Pobitora, but encroachment and poaching wiped the animal out of Manas and Laokhowa Wildlife Sanctuary.
- The lesser-known Laokhowa slipped under the radar of international watchdogs.
- Manas, in focus for the near-extinction of the pygmy hog, lost the World Heritage Site tag it received in 1985 along with Kaziranga from the UNESCO.
- The translocated rhinos helped Manas National Park get back its World Heritage Site status in 2011.
