The last four of five young elephants sent from Assam to temples in Tamil Nadu this month reached their new homes late last week, completing a transfer the Gauhati High Court declined to stop but has asked Assam to account for, in a detailed affidavit on the animals’ welfare, before it hears the case again on 15 October.
Manas National Park
India announced the launch of Project Rhino on Tuesday, a new scheme of central funding and technical support for the states that shelter India’s greater one-horned rhinos, arriving as Assam — home to roughly four-fifths of the world’s population — closed out 2025 with zero confirmed poaching deaths.
A court in Assam has handed down the 11th wildlife crime conviction connected to Manas Tiger Reserve, according to the Wildlife Trust of India — capping a legal effort that traces back to 2011.
Villagers in Amtola, a small settlement on the edge of the Bamungaon Hills in Assam’s Bongaigaon district, put more than 500 native saplings into the ground on 5 August.
Two orphaned leopard cat kittens, hand-raised from infancy by vets in Assam, took their first steps back towards a wild life this week — into an acclimatisation enclosure in Raimona National Park, with no radio collars and about a month left before the door opens for good.
Manas National Park and Tiger Reserve has recorded zero rhino and tiger poaching for three consecutive years, according to Assam’s Chief Minister. Officials attributed the result to intensified anti-poaching operations, increased deployment of forest personnel, modern surveillance technologies, intelligence-led enforcement, and active community participation.
This figure comes from an announcement by the Chief Minister’s office via social media and has not been independently verified.
Sources: Deccan Chronicle, Republic World, Northeast Today · 16–17 June 2026
This post is an aggregated summary. India Wildlife News directs readers to the original sources above and does not independently report or verify the figures cited.
Thirty-five calves. That’s the number a decade of tracking has produced from a rhino population that did not exist in Assam’s Manas National Park twenty-five years ago — because poachers had wiped it out entirely.