Jorhat, June 19: The Kaziranga National Park has got a new lease of life with over 7,576 bighas of land being included with the 430 square km national park. The development comes as a big boost for the park, which is gearing up its centenary celebrations next year. In a recent out-of-court settlement, 52 families that were encroaching upon a 7,576 bigha plot inside the park were rehabilitated in Nagaon district.
“This has come as a boon for the park animals. Animals of the park, specially the prized rhinos, can now roam around freely and graze on the added area,” a park official said.
The Koliabor sub-divisional officer said the process of resettling the 52 families, whose livelihood depended on the herd of cattle they owned, was completed on June 16.
“Now they are settled in and around the Deochanshy area in Koliabor. The new settlers will get assistance from the government to set up milk projects in the villages,” the SDO, P.K. Rajkhowa, said.
Encroachment inside the national park had become a major headache for the park authorities with denizens of the park constantly straying into the human settlements and mixing with domestic cattle population.
“The wild animals were being exposed to various diseases because of mixing with domestic cattle,” the park official said.
The immediate beneficiary of this new development, the official added, would be for the rhinos since the added area is adjacent to the Bagori range.“The Bagori range has the highest density of rhinos. The pride of the park will now have newer pastures.”
According to the last census, there are over 1,500 rhinos in the national park.
The issue of encroachment has long been plaguing the park officials.
Although there were allotments of large tracts for inclusion in the national park, most could not be integrated with the park due to encroachments. To make matters worse, the encroachers are often armed with court orders.
In an interim order, the court had directed the park authorities to make arrangements for resettling the encroachers.