A new scientific study has explained how Assam’s Kaziranga National Park became the world’s most important refuge for the Indian one-horned rhinoceros.
The research shows that long-term climate change, shifting vegetation, human pressure and the decline of megaherbivores played a major role in shaping Kaziranga’s unique ecosystem.
Scientists from Birbal Sahni institution of Palaeosciences (BSIP), an autonomous institute of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), used pollens from mud below wetlands in Kaziranga to trace the first long-term palaeoecological records in relation to the palaeoherbivory from the national park.
The researchers extracted a sediment core just over a metre long from the Sohola swamp inside the national park. Layer by layer, this mud acts like a natural archive, and preserving microscopic traces of the past. Among these traces are pollen grains from plants and fungal spores that thrive on animal dung.
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The study, published in journal, ‘Catena’ (Elsevier), shows that Kaziranga’s present landscape is very different from what it was in the past.
It explains that megaherbivores, including the Indian rhinoceros, disappeared from northwestern India due to climatic changes during late Holocene period, especially during the Little Ice Age, along with increasing human activities.
In contrast, northeastern India remained mostly climatically stable, which allowed rhinoceroses to move eastward and gradually settle in Kaziranga.
The research looks at why megaherbivores, particularly the Indian one-horned rhinoceros, declined and are now mainly found only in Kaziranga National Park. Fossil evidence shows that the species was once spread across much of the Indian subcontinent, but its range sharply reduced after the Holocene period.
Over the last nearly 3,300 years, northeastern India experienced stable climate conditions and lower human pressure, while habitat loss, worsening climate and overhunting in northwestern regions forced rhinoceroses to migrate east and concentrate in Kaziranga.
The study also explains how long-term vegetation and climate changes shaped wildlife survival, migration, and extinction.
