HOME
Assam, Northeast India,
Home of the Asian Rhino. This is a site dedicated to the magnificent animals of this amazing animal refuge. It is a small, private web site consisting mainly of photographs, for it is created by Bangkok-based photographer John Everingham in the hope that the information and photos here will prove useful to others interested in witnessing magnificent wildlife on very the brink of extinction.
More than half of the world’s
remaining population of Asian rhinoceros – about 3,000 in total ‑ live in
the 430 square kilometres of Kaziranga. The rhinos and their wild friends
live under dire threat of a vast tide of millions of desperately poor humans
pressing in on all sides. The people here have flooded in from nearby
Bangladesh, the most densely populated place on earth. And together with
the native Assamese and Indians the people continue to breed, increasing the
hunger to get into the park to eat the animals there, to steal the rhinos
horns, to graze their cattle on the rhinos’ grasses and convert rhino land
to rice fields.
This is the last little piece of
territory like it on earth – Asia’s final bit of tropical monsoon lowlands
alive with the animals that originally inhabited whole continents before the
expansion of humans. You can’t find this any place in Southeast Asia. Nor
in the rest of India. Sights like one sees in Kaziranga ‑ and you can see
in this web site – disappeared from most of Asia centuries ago when man
first began hunting here. The first beasts humans killed off were those of
the tropical lowlands, for he first turned the animals to meat then
converted their homelands to the endless rice fields that typify today’s
Asia.
Look through the pages here. And
think: should this, the last little piece of this natural world be allowed
to disappear? If the National Parks rangers of India fail at the difficult
task in their hands, the last of it could disappear within just a year or
two.
I am making these photographs
available for viewing ‑ and giving some basic travel information ‑ to
encourage foreign visitors to come and see Kaziranga. Your interest in this
park, and the money each visitor leaves behind in park fees, hotels,
restaurants, transport and tips will help convince the locals that
protecting the park is also in their personal interest.
Right now, in 2002, there are many,
many more people eager to get inside Kaziranga to poach the rhinos’ horns
for quick cash than there are people eager to protect the beautiful animals
here.
The animals of Kaziranga only
survive due to the protection of 500 National Parks guards who wage a
constant war of bullets with the poachers. For the time being the guards
are winning, and the rhino population of Kaziranga is increasing, heading
for 1,700 animals. But in year 2001 the poachers killed 8 of these rare
Asian rhinos, so there can be no let up in the battle.
Come and see. Your presence here
will give both moral support and real cash assistance to Kaziranga. And you
will see many a sight of huge animals living naturally that will surely
amaze you.
In the meantime, please take a look
at my photographs.