Guwahati, May 13: Concerned over the unabated killing of rhinos, Assam governor P.B. Acharya has written a letter to state environment and forest minister Atuwa Munda, asking him about the steps taken to curb the menace.

In his letter the governor said, "I would like to know the steps taken by you (against rhino poaching) and I am always here to extend a helping hand for successfully putting an end to the peril of the rhino's existence and to uphold its right to live free."

"I am sure the government of Assam has taken maximum steps possible to control the situation but I somehow feel that there is something lacking, and which is why the problem still prevails. Rhinos are being done to death frequently," he wrote.

Acharya also questioned why the state had not been able to appoint the special tiger protection force personnel or private informers to report such incidents.

"It is already a month, the model code for the Assembly election is over. Why are we not able to appoint the special tiger protection force personnel? Have we appointed any private informer to report such happenings or do we have any intelligence reports and inputs to act accordingly?" he asked.

Acharya also asked Munda to meet him before May 15 at Kaziranga National Park.

As many as nine rhinos, eight of them in Kaziranga itself, have been killed by suspected poachers till date. Last year, 17 were killed while 27 fell prey to poachers in 2014.

"We all know poaching and killing of rhinos in the state have become one of the major environmental threats in our country. The one-horned rhino, surviving in the Northeast, accounts for almost 95 per cent of the total wild one-horned rhinos in the world," Acharya wrote.

"It should be a serious concern for all of us to preserve and protect this precious species. We should leave no stone unturned in rooting out this dastardly menace, which predicts the extinction of one of the rarest species of wildlife of the country," he said in the letter.

Assam has nearly 1,200 security staff deployed for the protection of wildlife. In addition, it has come to light that the Union ministry of environment had approved the constitution of a special tiger protection force comprising 112 personnel with 100 per cent central assistance of Rs 3.72 crore, which is yet to materialise.

Acharya expressed dismay over the theft of a sandalwood tree from the campus of the residence of the Gauhati University vice-chancellor recently, saying the matter should be thoroughly investigated.