Manas, Assam | September 10, 2026
Few wildlife recovery stories in India are as dramatic as that of the Greater One-horned Rhino in Manas National Park. Once driven to local extinction by poaching and years of civil unrest, rhinos have returned to this UNESCO World Heritage landscape—and some of the people who once hunted wildlife have become part of the force protecting it.
By 2022, an estimated 54 Greater One-horned Rhinos were living across the Manas Landscape, an extraordinary turnaround for an area where the species had effectively disappeared.
When Manas lost its rhinos
Manas was once an important stronghold for the Greater One-horned Rhino. But the political turmoil that engulfed the region from the late 1980s severely weakened wildlife protection.
Anti-poaching camps, roads and bridges were damaged, forest personnel faced enormous security challenges, and poachers exploited the breakdown in protection.
The situation became so serious that UNESCO placed Manas on its List of World Heritage in Danger in 1992. By the mid-1990s, the park’s rhino population had been wiped out; WWF records cited in the Economic Times account place the disappearance of the last rhino in 1996.
For a protected area historically associated with rhinos, the loss was devastating.
But the recovery of Manas would eventually involve much more than simply bringing rhinos back.
Former poachers cross over to conservation
One of the most remarkable parts of the Manas revival occurred within the communities surrounding the park.
Members of the All Bodo Students’ Union, concerned by the destruction of wildlife, began promoting community participation in conservation. In 2003, the Manas Maozigendri Ecotourism Society (MMES) was established to involve local people directly in protecting the landscape.
The initiative reached out to people who knew the forest perhaps better than almost anyone else—including former poachers.
Some agreed to change sides.
The very skills that had once helped them hunt wildlife—the ability to navigate forests, identify animal trails, understand wildlife movements and recognise places used by poachers—became valuable tools for conservation.
Former hunters began working as protection volunteers and patrol guards, helping keep poachers out, remove traps and dismantle hideouts.
It represented an important change in conservation strategy: people living around Manas were increasingly becoming participants in protecting wildlife rather than being treated merely as a threat to it.
Indian Rhino Vision brings the rhino home
Community protection alone could not restore a species that had already disappeared. Rhinos had to be physically returned to Manas.
That happened through Indian Rhino Vision 2020 (IRV 2020), a major conservation initiative involving the Assam Forest Department and several conservation partners.
The programme sought to expand Assam’s rhino population and reduce the danger of concentrating too many animals in only a few protected areas.
The first major step came in April 2008, when two male rhinos were captured in Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary and translocated to Manas.
More followed.
By 2012, 18 wild rhinos had been translocated to Manas under the programme. Rescued rhinos were also rehabilitated and released into the park through complementary conservation initiatives.
The strategy meant that animals from established populations could create a new breeding population in a landscape from which rhinos had disappeared.
Rescued calves get a second chance
Another strand of the recovery involved orphaned or rescued rhino calves.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) worked with the Assam Forest Department to rehabilitate rhinos through the Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation.
Between 2006 and 2020, IFAW says 16 rescued rhino calves were moved to Manas as part of efforts to rebuild the population.
Reintroducing rhinos, however, was only the beginning.
The animals needed protection, monitoring and suitable habitat—and they needed to reproduce.
They did.
Recent research on Manas’s re-established rhino population has found encouraging evidence of breeding and adaptation among the reintroduced animals, although researchers caution that continued protection and additional genetic management may be required to maintain a healthy population over the long term.
From zero to 54 rhinos
Slowly, the numbers began to tell the story.
From having effectively zero rhinos, Manas once again became a landscape where visitors could encounter the enormous armour-plated herbivores grazing in its grasslands.
By 2022, IFAW estimated that 54 Greater One-horned Rhinos were roaming the wider Manas Landscape.
More recent reporting in 2026 indicates that Manas National Park itself now holds more than 50 rhinos, with most having been born there—an especially important indication that the restored population is reproducing rather than surviving solely through repeated translocations.
That distinction matters.
A successful wildlife reintroduction is not simply about transporting animals into a protected area. The real test comes when those animals survive, establish territories, reproduce and create subsequent generations.
Manas appears to have crossed that crucial threshold.
Ecotourism gives communities another stake in wildlife
The revival has also helped demonstrate how wildlife can create economic opportunities for surrounding communities.
Visitors who travel to Manas want to see rhinos, elephants, tigers and other wildlife. That gives local communities a tangible economic reason to keep those animals alive.
Community-based ecotourism initiatives associated with MMES have therefore become another element of the transformation.
The Manas Jungle Camp, for example, developed as a community conservation tourism initiative, providing an alternative livelihood connected directly to protecting the forest and its wildlife.
The transformation is particularly powerful because the same landscape that once supported poaching can now support livelihoods based on keeping wildlife alive.
A recovery built by many hands
It would be misleading to attribute the return of Manas’s rhinos to any single organisation or programme.
The recovery resulted from a combination of wildlife translocation, rehabilitation of rescued animals, stronger anti-poaching protection, restoration of infrastructure, scientific monitoring, community participation and alternative livelihoods.
The Assam Forest Department, Bodoland authorities, conservation organisations, frontline forest staff, researchers and local communities have all played roles.
And among those local participants are people whose personal journeys mirror the transformation of Manas itself: former poachers who became wildlife protectors.
The job is not finished
Manas’s success should not create complacency.
Research published in 2026 describes the restored rhino population as encouraging but still potentially vulnerable. Maintaining genetic diversity, protecting habitat and preventing renewed poaching will remain important as the population expands.
Rhino conservation across Assam also depends on maintaining several secure populations rather than allowing the overwhelming majority of animals to remain concentrated in a single protected area.
That was one of the fundamental ideas behind moving rhinos back to Manas in the first place.
More than a rhino success story
The return of the Greater One-horned Rhino to Manas ultimately tells two interconnected stories.
One is about an animal brought back from local extinction.
The other is about people.
A landscape that once lost its rhinos amid poaching, conflict and collapsing protection now supports a breeding population of more than 50 animals. And some people who once possessed the forest knowledge needed to hunt wildlife are now using that same knowledge to keep wildlife alive.
From zero rhinos to more than 50, Manas demonstrates that even severe conservation losses can sometimes be reversed when wildlife protection and local communities begin working towards the same goal.
Source credit: The Economic Times, September 9, 2026, with background information from the Assam Forest Department, IFAW and recent conservation research.
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