Experiences with Rhino, Tiger and Elephants in Dudhwa National Park, Uttar Pradesh.

 

                     In 1987, after successfully executing two major assignments  one of them was my doctoral work on Gir Lion study in Gujarat, the survey of snow leopard in Trans Himalayas and my contribution to the EIA of Gori Ganga River, I was looking forward for some new assignment. During the same year the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun (WII) was involved in a collaborative project with UP Forest Department on monitoring the reintroduced rhinos in Dudhwa National Park (DNP) under the supervision of Prof VB Sawarkar, IFS. Considering my field experience in wildlife ecology that included several ecosystems, habitats and species, I was offered the task—intensive monitoring of the re-introduced rhinos leading to establishment of their population. A well-wisher had told me that it may prove a challenging assignment as not many have endured the hardships of living and working under the harsh conditions of those forests that were dominated with terai vegetation—swamps and tall wet grasslands with dense sal forests on the upland areas. It was known that dacoits often camped in these forests to escape from law, and tigers inhabiting the park had earned some notoriety in attacking people. There was a history of man-eating tigers, although most incidents had taken place outside the park in sugarcane fields dotted with swamps. The HQ of the project was at Salukapur that had a forest rest house (FRH) and a small establishment of field staff. The area was malaria prone.  I was informed that one researcher had already left the Salukapur monitoring center. Accepting such a challenging assignment was not new to me, so I decided to accept it.