WAITING FOR AN ARK

Most of the land in Kaziranga National Park is under water, ravaged by the floods that have killed nearly 60 people, displaced tens of thousands, and damaged the lives of hundreds of thousands more. In addition to the human suffering, authorities estimate that at least 70 animals in the park have drowned. In response to the annual flooding, the park has built islands of higher ground, knolls where the animals can take shelter. But there are still too few and inevitably animals are lost. Kaziranga is a Unesco World Heritage Site and contains the largest population of one-horned rhinoceroses in the world. Here, officials patrol the park, looking for poachers seeking to profit from the marooning of large clusters of animals on relatively small bits of land.