Jorhat/Guwahati, June 28: Ganga, a rhino at Manas National Park, defied the laws of nature and gave birth to two calves within four years, just two years two months after her first calf was born.
Experts said this is a "rare" event, as the average time between calves in wild rhinos is between three and four years.
"Twenty-six months of inter-calving is very unusual. We are happy that our efforts to bring back Manas to its past glory are slowly turning into a great conservation story of the 21st century," said Bhaskar Choudhury, a rhino expert and head veterinarian at the International Fund for Animal Welfare-Wildlife Trust of India.
The newborn was first sighted by the Wildlife Trust of India team on June 19. The state forest department later confirmed the birth. It took some time to confirm the discovery because of heavy rain.
The Assam forest department rescued Ganga, who gave birth to her second calf in July 2004, after she was swept away during floods in Kaziranga National Park.
Thereafter, she was admitted to the IFAW-WTI-run Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation (CWRC).
After being hand-reared for almost three years, along with two other female rhinos, Mainao and Jamuna, she was released in a boma (enclosure) in Manas in 2007. In 2010, she was finally let out of the boma to live in the wild.
After a wait of three years, she gave birth to a female calf in 2013.
The rhino population in Manas now stands at 31.
Experts said this proves that the World Heritage Site is still good as a rhino habitat.
Poachers have killed eight rhinos in the park since 2011 after it got back the heritage tag.
This news will certainly gladden the hearts of wildlife lovers and officials, as it comes on a day when the World Heritage Committee meeting starts in Bonn.
Manas will come up for discussion in the meeting and the Centre will be asked to increase its efforts to combat poaching.
"Our computer models were based on data, indicating an average inter-birth interval of three years for this species. It is certainly possible that a female may give birth after just two years, although rhino experts acknowledge that this is probably a rare event. The models we constructed allowed such rare events to take place, including those situations where it may be four years before an individual female produces another calf," Philip Miller, the senior programme officer of the Conservation Breeding Specialist Group, told The Telegraph.
Miller was part of the group, which carried out the population viability analysis of the greater one-horned rhino populations in India, especially Assam using Vortex, a simulation software package, for the analysis.
Christy Williams of Kathmandu-based WWF Asian Elephant and Rhino Program, said in healthy breeding populations, the inter-calving period is on an average between 2.5 and three years.
Rhinos are known to produce calves at two-year intervals in some cases.
Age, ill health and generally poor nutrition could result in four-year or longer intervals.
Rhino expert Bibhab Talukdar said this was nothing unnatural, but certainly rare.
"It can happen under special circumstances," he added.
Another expert said the breeding and reproductive dynamics of rhinos in the wild still need to be studied in detail.
