Rhino rehab stuck for want of drugs
DUDHWA NATIONAL PARK (UP): A plan to replicate one of the country’s most successful rhino rehabilitation programmes at the Dudhwa National Park in Uttar Pradesh is stuck -- for want of a sedating drug that is banned in India.
The state’s forest department has now sought to obtain no-objection certificate (NOC) from the central government to acquire — Etorphine (M99) and its antidote — produced in some African countries, the officials said.
“The drug is used to immobilise large animals like the rhino. It is required to shift some of them from their present enclosed area to the new one, and to do tests,” Dudhwa National Park director Sunil Choudhary said.
The plan is to rehabilitate three rhinos in an enclosed area of 14 sq.km in the Belraya Range of the forest, some 15 km from the present 24 sq.km Sonaripur Range’s enclosure where 34 rhinos thrive.
Considered as an example of one of the most successful rehabilitation programmes in India, rhinos were re-introduced in Dudhwa in 1985 after the region was stripped off its last free ranging rhino by a hunting party in 1878.
However, the second phase of the rehabilitation has been delayed for over 25 years.
“The NOC is sought from at least four different ministries, including agriculture and environment ministries, and the Narcotics Department. It would take next two to three months to obtain the drug,” Choudhary said.