Context: The Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve reopened on Sunday with a literary tribute to a British forest officer Patrick D. Stracey. A nature and wildlife-specific library at the Centenary Convention Centre in the Kohora area of Kaziranga has been inaugurated and named after him.
Patrick D. Stracey
- Stracey was born in Andhra Pradesh’s Kakinada, and served as an Indian Forest Service officer in Assam.
- He played a key role in renaming the Kaziranga Game Sanctuary as a wildlife sanctuary in 1950.
- He also established the Assam Forest School, a training institute catering to the northeastern region.
Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve
- Formed in 1908 on the recommendation of Mary Curzon (the wife of the Viceroy of India – Lord Curzon of Kedleston).
- The park is located on the edge of the Eastern Himalayan biodiversity hotspots – Golaghat and Nagaon districts of the state of Assam.
- In the year 1985, the park was declared as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
- With the rising population of Tigers in the Park, Kaziranga was declared as Tiger Reserve in 2006.
- The park area is circumscribed by the:
- Brahmaputra River, which forms the northern and eastern boundaries
- Mora Diphlu, which forms the southern boundary.
- Other notable rivers within the park are the Diphlu and Mora Dhansiri.
Fauna
- It is home to more than 2200 Indian one-horned rhinoceros, approximately 2/3rd of their total world population.
- The park is the breeding ground of elephants, wild water buffalo, and swamp deer.
- Hoolock Gibbon, Tiger, Leopard, Indian Elephant, Sloth Bear, Wild water buffalo, and swamp deer are Important species found here.
- The park is also recognized as an Important Bird Area by Birdlife International for the conservation of avifaunal species.
- Birds like lesser white-fronted goose, ferruginous duck, Baer’s pochard duck and lesser adjutant, greater adjutant, black-necked stork, and Asian Openbill stork especially migrate from the Central Asia during the winter season.
Flora
- Kaziranga National park’s 430 square kilometre area is sprinkled with elephant-grass meadows, swampy lagoons, and dense forests.
- Due to the difference in altitude between the eastern and western areas of the park, four types of vegetation are found
- Alluvial inundated grasslands
- Alluvial savanna woodlands
- Tropical moist mixed deciduous forests
- Tropical semi-evergreen forests.
