Tourists watch a one-horned rhinoceros at the Kaziranga park. (File picture)

Guwahati, Aug. 8: After Manas and Nameri, Assam has officially got its third tiger reserve in Kaziranga.

The Centre declared this World Heritage Site a tiger reserve under the Project Tiger scheme on Saturday, but the decision was made public today. “The Assam forest department received a formal intimation just yesterday,” Assam chief wildlife warden M.C. Malakar said.

The number of tigers in Kaziranga, according to the 2000 census, was 86. Tigers in Nameri, according to the 2002 count, totalled 26, while in Manas, it was 65 in 2000.

Malakar said following this status, it would help obtain more funding for the national park. “Field staff will also get a project allowance,” he said.

He said the government would soon issue a formal notification demarcating the boundary of the tiger reserve and other relevant details. The tiger reserve will have a core area and a buffer area.

“While the core area will be the national park, nearby areas will have to be declared areas under the buffer zone.”

Malakar said Dispur will soon submit schemes to the Project Tiger authority to obtain funding for the tiger reserve.

“Funding will be possible only from next year. But that, too, depends on the availability of funds with the Centre,” he said. The state government is hoping for a corpus of Rs 1 crore, he added.

Kaziranga National Park gets a sum of Rs 60 lakh annually under a central scheme for development of national parks and sanctuaries. “Protection measures will also be improved once we get more funding,” Malakar said.

Malakar said this will also give a big boost to conservation efforts in Assam, which have been progressing very well in the past few years.

“The nomination of park to a tiger reserve will add more colour to the park as more visitors will also come,” he added.

Kaziranga National Park was designated a natural world heritage site in 1985 on the basis of its outstanding universal value representing significant ongoing geological processes, biological evolution and human interactions with the natural environment.

The tag was also given to help conserve significant habitats of threatened plant and animal species.